


Girl Out Boy

by scarredsodeep



Series: Girl Out Boy [1]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Bisexuality, Canon Compliant, Closeted, Coming Out, Coming of Age, F/F, Fall Out Girl, Femslash, Gen, Genderbending, High School, Lesbian Andy, Pre-Hiatus (Fall Out Boy), Slow Burn, Summer Tour, This is about what it's like being a girl and how music and friendship and other girls will save you, Van Days, girl out boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2018-12-21 03:44:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 15
Words: 65,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11935626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep/pseuds/scarredsodeep
Summary: A story about the band getting together, what it's like to be a teenage girl in the music scene, and the life-saving properties of friendship with women. And so much awkward adolescent pining in that liminal girl-space between intense friendship and romance. Van Days canon femslash.I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will, change the world for real





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [Aaaaand of course she made a playlist to go with it. Enjoy!](https://open.spotify.com/user/marvelgirl238/playlist/7Ja7oPJdFfVAjnYiAjgvRj)
> 
> Like Girl Out Boy? Want to print a pretty copy with covers and moodboards for your very own? Download the officially formatted files [here](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1oqr-7wQOxTyHOKSmUHFTeb2wz15ZzxNq), featuring artwork by the talented @boxedblondes, @butbyfall, and @urieclectic.

 

Girls like Pete don’t get called Casanova. They don’t get back slaps in the locker room or high fives in the hallway. Nobody _congratulates_ them.

They get eaten up. Consumed. Spat back out.

Here are some things people call her:

  * Slut
  * Bullseye
  * Whore (which at least implies a certain industriousness)
  * Fuckdoll
  * Cheap Ho
  * Nasty-Ass Skank
  * Attention Whore (a girl wanting someone to pay attention to her is the worst sin ever written)
  * Emo
  * Poser
  * Emo Poser
  * Hand Clap (the clap is such an outdated STD, and handjobs such a benign sex act anyway, she wonders why they bother)
  * Hobag
  * Cumslut
  * Bitch
  * Dickwarmer
  * Cunt



Honestly, the lack of creativity depresses her most. If she is to be a poxed creature, a scarlet harlot, she at least wants a cool B movie title: The Slut That Walks. Herpes Attack. Dr. Terror’s House of Whores. Elviral: Mistress of Dicks. But that’s high schoolers for you. No imagination.

Not that anyone cares, but the rumors about her are mostly true. She’s just another disposable victim. It doesn’t matter, whether she said yes or no. It doesn’t matter to her anymore, either. Hands on bedroom doorknobs, hands on bodies, locks that don’t keep anybody out, locks that only cage her up smaller and smaller in the close, hot center of herself. You might as well enjoy it, is Pete’s philosophy. If you’re going to be the fucking Skank of Babylon, you might as well do it well.

So she straightens her hair, dyes it in chunks, obscures herself in eyeliner and nail polish and lipstick. She wears short skirts and fishnets and big black hoodies that hide the marks on her arms. She laughs prettily, flirts when she feels generous and makes cutting comments when she feels mean. She drinks whatever’s handed to her, does anything with anyone behind the bleachers, in a closet, in the backseat of whoever’s car. She goes far away inside herself, the click of lock after lock after lock, the throb of the deadbolt resonating deep inside her, and doesn’t care what happens. If her feelings are to be trusted, it’s not like any of it is even real.

It’s just bodies.

To be girl like Pete is to be a performance. A product, a brand. _Merchandise_. Single-use. And she’s so eye-catching, so miserable and stunning. Everyone wants to touch her, taste her, own a piece of her, whether they use ugly words or ugly hands to do it. Everyone wants to leave a mark. Pete floats above it all.

It’s no wonder a girl like Pete feels at home on a stage. It’s another way to perform, another way to be consumed. Pete understands herself best through consumption, sees who she is through the lens of someone else. She feels easier to deal with when she’s bite-sized, disappearing down someone’s gullet. She only exists in the moment someone feels something about her. When they forget her, she disappears.

The main thing about music, though. The main thing about being on stage. She gets to be the one coming up with words, for once. She gets to be the one languaging the story. Words are a bridge: they’re how you build a way from yourself to anyone else. They’re a connection. That makes it important, to use the right word. To be precise. When Pete lives in other people’s narratives, other people’s stories, she’s slut skank nasty ho. With words like that, you can really only make one kind of connection.

If Pete does a thing, she does it all the way. So she’s not just in one band, she’s in every band that will have her. She’s not just at one show, she’s at every show. Queen of the scene, crowned by default, since she’s one of the only girls who dares. Everyone grabs handfuls. Everyone tears her apart. She’s royalty, in the way any woman in history has been royalty: Kept. Bred. Consumed.

Pete decides like every woman before her decided. She decides it’s worth it, to have a type of power. She decides she might as well use for her advantage what they’ll take either way.

Up on stage, you decide who you touch. They can reach and grab, but Pete gets to choose whether hands land on her. High above them, she can kick with her toes, stomp with her heels. She’s beauty in boots, the thorns on a rose stem. She chooses. They think about her whether they get skin or not.

It’s the first time in her life she’s been the one making that choice.

*

Andy dislikes Pete Wentz instinctively, reflexively, viscerally, without ever once interacting with her. Andy has the sense you’d want to be wearing a Hazmat suit and an antibacterial mister and a dental dam to even have a conversation with this chick. Andy spent all of high school being bullied for being butch, sexless, and interested in metal bands. She played the saxophone and wore thick glasses. She very publicly didn’t give a shit about what anyone said about her ( _look up its skirt so we can tell if it’s a chick or a dude_ , some jackass said on the last day of her life she ever wore a skirt), and at home in private she cried during Star Wars and beat the shit out of her drum kit and screamed along with metalcore until she was voiceless and deaf. On weekends she drove her mom’s car to Chicago and lost-and-found herself in mosh pits, the only place where she felt _right_ in her own skin.

So when she became aware of Pete Wentz—concubine of hardcore, with the same bands Andy got bullied over plastered on her tits, all slow sexy grins and eyelashes and being passed hand to hand like her pussy was the Holy Grail, every bit as giggly and feminine as Andy had never been able to be—well, yeah. Andy had a reaction to that. Andy’s reaction had next to nothing to do with Pete herself, maybe, but she hated her from a distance for most of high school without noticing that.

Everything Andy didn’t have came so easily to Pete. And she so casually assumed sovereignty over everything Andy had ever been good at. It didn’t seem fair for her to have everything. Whenever Andy saw her wearing merch of her favorite bands, she was gripped by the ugly urge to demand, _name your three favorite songs, name the drummer, tell me the guitarist’s dog’s birthday or get out of this show, you big fake bitch_. The volatility of her hatred didn’t even alarm her. It was high school. Everything felt like that.

So when Pete comes up to her during a show one night, comes _right up to her on purpose_ , Andy reacts like it’s a threat. Pete’s all sweaty and euphoric from playing with the opening band, her boobs buoyant and shining with body glitter and generally busting out of her homemade Earth Crisis tank top. She looks exactly like every girl who’s ever been mean to Andy, only less blond and with the audacity to wear one of Andy’s favorite bands on her chest. Andy would rather die than admit Pete was good up there.

“Are you Andy Hurley?” she asks. Andy’s heart speeds at panic-levels, her blood rushing in her ears. Her hands fist up, ready for a fight. Pete Wentz kisses girls for the fun of it, a party trick, and it only makes people like her more. Andy got run out of her Girl Scout troop for being a ‘creepy lesbo’ the one time in her life she tried it.

“What’s it to you?” Andy replies, her jaw set like a pugilist’s, her own voice tasting like gasoline on her angry tongue.

Pete is either totally unaware of the danger or cheerfully unconcerned about whether she gets punched. “Oh my god, I’ve wanted to meet you _forever_ ,” she gushes. She actually reaches out and touches Andy’s arm. Andy recoils violently. “Ever since I saw you play. In Racetraitor? Oh my god. I _love_ you guys. You are like, the best drummer in the entire hardcore scene.”

Andy’s brain is malfunctioning. She can’t be hearing what she thinks she’s hearing. She blurts out, “I always thought you were this huge bitch.” This is not the most appropriate response to a compliment about her drumming, _probably_ , but it’s too late. It’s out of her mouth already.

Pete’s smile fades, exuberance and warmth draining out til it’s this small, distant frown. “You know, this is a hard scene to be a girl in. It’s easier if we have each other’s backs.” Pete allows herself to be jostled by the crowd, being battered further and further from Andy. Andy feels guilty and sick. She opens her mouth and says, “Can you even name an Earth Crisis album.”

Pete doesn’t get angry, that’s the worst thing. She just looks sad. She doesn’t curse at Andy, or flip her off, or call her a dyke, or try to prove herself, or _anything_. She just says, “Well, you’re a great drummer anyway,” and walks away.

Andy tries to find her, after the show. She wants to apologize or take a shower or something. She feels like such a slimeball. For years she’s been making petty judgments about a person who just interacted with her in an excited, fundamentally kind way. And she was a dick about it.

When she finds Pete, she’s doing car bombs at the sticky-topped bar, surrounded by dudes who look too old to be getting an 18 year old drunk. Andy notices for the first time how all of Pete’s flirting and laughing doesn’t quite make up for the way everyone around her looks like wolves. There are no women anywhere around. Men’s eyes skip over Andy like she doesn’t exist, something she’s used to. “That’s right, take it _down_ ,” some skeevo with a mohawk leers. It’s clear he’s talking about more than the car bomb.

The club is emptying out, except for these lecherous mcfucks and the sparking, hypnotic Pete. She puts off more light than a captive sun. She belongs in the sky.

Andy doesn’t give a shit what’s happening here. She’s shutting it down.

She smashes into the group like it’s a mosh pit, all elbows and violence. Dudes cry out in protest as she Doc-stomps their toes. She marches right up to Pete, who is flush-faced and glaze-eyed and getting pretty wobbly, and seizes her by the arm. Andy links up with her, a phalanx of two, and scowls out at the pack of wolves around them.

“What are you doing?” Pete asks. She sounds wonder-struck and very drunk. Like really very drunk.

“Having your back,” Andy says. “Show’s over, assholes!” Andy tells the assembly of gross dudes. “Me and my girl are going home.”

Pete sags against her like gratitude. Together, they leave the club. Andy decides she doesn’t hate Pete so much after all.

*

Jo is fifteen years old when the girls from Arma Angelus invite her on tour. She tries to sound as sophisticated as possible when she says, “I’ll ask my mom.”

Dan, the guy she would be subbing for, is clearly _so_ unimpressed. Jo lifts her chin and sticks her boobs out, trying to look grown-up.

“Can we, like, find someone who’s not _five_?” he complains. “This kid is not gonna be able to handle my riffs.”

Pete and Andy, the two most amazing people Jo has ever met in real life, exchange a look. “Give her your guitar,” Andy tells Dan. Jo gets a thrill on how bossy and impossible to argue with she sounds. Andy is squared, slouching shoulders and a boob-flattening sports bra and basketball shorts and barely combed hair and a labret piercing. The soft flare of her hips is the only feminine thing about her. Jo’s pretty sure she’s the only person at this band practice wearing men’s pants. Everything about her doesn’t give a fuck.

“Is this an audition? Am I auditioning?” Jo squeaks. She’s pretty much vibrating with nervous energy. This is the greatest day of her life.

“You’re shutting this guy up,” Pete says, grinning. She squeezes Jo’s shoulder. Dan grumbles, handing over the guitar.

“So Pale Horse is my favorite of your songs?” Jo blathers anxiously, tuning the already tuned guitar. It’s got a longer neck than the one she’s got at home. She tries to will herself taller. She’s glad Pete and Andy are both so short. She feels it lends her credibility. “But I think the bridge is like, actually pretty boring. So here’s how I like to play it.”

Before Dan can even properly look offended, Jo brings her courage into her chest and starts to play.

By the time she’s done, there’s not a damn thing for Dan to complain about, and they all know it. Jo’s beaming brighter than the sun. Pete and Andy grin back.

“It’s you. It _has_ to be you,” the bassist Tim says firmly.

“Damn, I wish Dan was half that talented,” Andy jokes, deadpan. She’s definitely joking, right?

Jo could float away.

“Here’s an idea,” Pete says, holding up one battered, Mattel-pink fingernail. “Let _me_ talk to your mom.”

 

“Why are you dressed like it’s Easter?” Andy hisses at Pete. Andy’s in her usual snarled ponytail, band shirt, jeans, and comfy shoes. Pete is dressed like a confection in a pale, flowered sundress that has her thin arms, red scratches, tattoos, and bony clavicle on display. Her bangs are clipped out of her eyes with a pastel barrette. She has eyeshadow on.

“Trust me,” Pete says haughtily. “I’m good at parents.”

Jo lets them in and directs them to the living room. She’s just dressed like herself, in an embarrassing old Disney World sweatshirt with Cinderella’s castle on it and shorts. She only has like two cool outfits, and it is unwise to wear either in front of her mom. “Mom? My friends are here.”

Pete and Andy tramp into the living room like Jo’s lesbian moms. Pete stops in front of Mrs. Trohman and does this weird little bob, maybe what you’d think a curtsey was if you’d only read about them, and says, “Petra Wentz. Pleased to meet you.” She settles herself carefully onto the couch, smoothing out her skirt like wrinkles, and not her red-dyed hair or scars or pierced eyebrow or general vibe, will make her seem unsavory. Andy shakes Mrs. Trohman’s hand gruffly, saying, “I’m Andy,” in such a low voice that it’s clear Jo’s mom has no idea what gender she is.

Jo is feeling very tense. She twists her sweatshirt in her hands. She wants to go on this tour so, so badly. There are way too many piercings visible in this room for any mom to be comfortable.

“So you’re the ones in this band Jo won’t stop talking about?” Mrs. Trohman asks uneasily.

“The _coolest band_ in Chicago hardcore, who invited me _on tour_ , Mom,” Jo says in a rush, like maybe her mom has forgotten since she was last gushing about it. “Like, the best thing that’s ever happened to me, the reason for all those guitar lessons and spending hours practicing every day and—you just don’t know what this means to me.” She _will_ cry if her mom says no. It will _not_ be fake.

“Uh, that’s us,” Andy says.

“I’ve heard some of your music and it all sounds very devil-worshippy to me, to be honest,” says Mrs. Trohman.

Jo is so embarrassed she could die.

“Oh, no. We’re atheists,” says Andy calmly. Jo’s mom looks even more scandalized, like: at least devil worshippers believe in _something_.

Jo sends psychic distress signals to Pete, who is supposed to be good at this whole charming moms thing. Why is she letting Andy do all the talking?

“I’m actually an anarchist,” Andy goes on. She’s starting to look horrified by what’s coming out of her mouth, too, but seems unable to stop herself.

“ _But that’s not reflected in our music_ ,” Pete interrupts, like she’s literally awed by the stupidity that’s on display. “Or our lifestyle. We’re also vegetarians,” she adds, like this might help.

“What do you do in this band, Petra?” Mrs. Trohman asks, half like she thinks Pete will say _I perform the blood rituals_ and half like she’s really, really trying to be polite. Everyone looks so pained. Jo can’t sit still.

“I do the screaming,” Pete says earnestly. Jo’s mom’s eyes widen. “And I write the lyrics. I’m very passionate about… literature.”

“And Andy’s pretty much the greatest drummer in the world,” blurts Jo. Andy’s cheeks go pink.

“And you met Jo… at school?” This is a tricky moment: the worst thing would be for Andy or Pete to say _no, we met her at all those shows she’s been sneaking out to on weekends_. For once, they at least just say the second worst possible thing:

“We’re in college,” Andy blurts, wincing. It is like watching a brontosaurus try to navigate an ornamental rose garden, this conversation. Jo is developing lifelong cardiac risk factors just from proximity.

Mrs. Trohman looks from Jo, bouncing on her toes with nervous energy and a depraved grin on her face, to the youths of ill repute seated on her couch.

“I have to tell you, girls, I’m very uncomfortable with this whole idea,” she says at last.

“Please, please, please. Mom! Please. It’s just three weeks,” Joe begs pathetically.

“We’ll look out for her, ma’am,” says Pete. Jo’s mom, a cardiologist, hates to be called ma’am. “We won’t let any creeps talk to her, and we’ll put her straight to bed after our gigs, and there will be absolutely no drinking or casual sex or drugs. Andy’s straightedge, so she doesn’t tolerate that stuff.”

Mrs. Trohman is very pale. With great forbearance, she asks, “And where will you be sleeping on this tour? Unsafe motels, the homes of strangers, a tent in the woods…?” She is clearly bracing herself for the worst.

“Oh, definitely not,” says Andy. “We’ll sleep in the van. Doors locked. And we’ll make the boys sleep outside.”

Jo’s mom looks like she stopped breathing ten minutes ago. “The _boys_?”

 

Jo hugs her guitar case to her chest in the back of Tim’s van and really just can’t believe they pulled this off. She keeps waiting for her mom to come running down the driveway, screaming _I CHANGED MY MIND BRING MY DAUGHTER BACK THIS INSTANT_ , but they pull away from the curb without any sign of her.

Pete meets Jo’s eyes in the rearview mirror, grins. “Welcome to the Arma Angelus summer tour, babe. You have officially arrived.”

It is the best summer Jo has ever had in her life.

*

The first time Pete sees Patricia is not the first time Patricia sees Pete.

Here is what it’s like, when you’re 15 and fucking awkward and more interested in music than anyone around you:

Your only friends are the band nerds, and not the cool ones, but the ones with braces on their teeth and spit valves on their instruments. You aren’t pretty enough for them to fall in love with, which is a fucking relief, but when your baby fat starts melting into boobs it’s like they notice you’re a girl for the first time, and they start falling silent when you get to the lunch table and stop inviting you to things on Friday nights. (Meanwhile your little sister, who is only in the 7th grade, is the queen of strawberry lipgloss—you’re not even sure if that refers to the color or the flavor—and invitations to high school parties you don’t even know are happening. It’s fine. It’s totally fine.)

You keep opening your mouth in classes even though it makes everyone roll their eyes, because you have a lot of opinions and you weren’t raised to apologize for that. You have such a fucking temper, and you blush _bright_ red when you’re angry, which is a lot. You sweat too much. You wear hats whenever possible and avoid eye contact most of the time. You keep your headphones in during 90% of your waking hours; you’d rather be listening to Miles Davis or Soul Coughing or Fine Young Cannibals than high schoolers anyway. You get all your shirts at thrift stores and collect records and no one ever knows anything about the bands you like. You read a lot of Dianna Wynne Jones novels. You’re lonely.

You’re loud at the wrong moments and turn shy exactly when you need to speak. People tease you a lot, mostly about the time you got your period on a school field trip and your _geometry teacher_ taught you how to put in a tampon in the museum bathroom while basically the entire class snickered outside. You aren’t really friends with other girls, partly because you didn’t think the genders of your friends mattered until it was too late, partly because the girls who are in band all have flutes up their asses and care more about boys than music anyways. You aren’t great at belonging. Well, or maybe you’re a prodigy at it—you wouldn’t know. You’ve never done it.

So when Patricia—call her Pat, please—is mistaken as ‘older than 15’ by a guy at her favorite record store, gets told about a basement show, and stumbles onto the underground music scene of local bands and homemade fliers and dark throbbing rooms of other people who _get it_ , it lights her up in places she didn’t even know she had. No one cares if she’s a little chubby in a mosh pit. Everyone wants to have heated discussions about the use of dissonant chords in Interpol songs. People think it’s cool that she’s wearing a vintage Elvis Costello shirt. And no one cares if she’s loud or not. They’re all just there to dance.

The first time she sees Pete is like this:

Pete’s on stage. Her hands are cupped around a microphone and she’s screaming, ragged and ugly and not caring at all. She bellows,

_You throw me out / You push me down_

_You tell me that I don’t belong_

_You think I’m too big, yeah_

_I’m bigger than you_

Pat’s transfixed. She cannot look away. Pat could never do something like that—get up in front of all these people and belt out what’s most true. It’s why she’s a drummer, or part of why: drums let you be the backbone, the fist and the thrust and the mood of a song, while still giving you something to hide behind. The drums are like speaking in code.

She watches Pete scream and drop to the stage and flip off the whole crowd from her knees and jump around and grin and just be totally free up there, and Pat wants to be her so sharply it’s like a physical jab to her chest. She’s fearless, up there. Exactly who she is and not sorry. Wearing the right thing, moving the right away, surrounded but unintimidated by long-haired hardcore dudes. She carries the eyes of the whole room so easy, so confident, it’s like she’s totally alone. Pat watches her and Pat knows: she wants to set her heart by this. She wants to be a in a band, not as in marching but as in rock. She _has_ to be. She wants to learn how to burn for the whole world to see and not give a damn.

Pat buys a photocopied lithograph of Pete’s band. She tapes it to her bedroom door. She traces the grainy smudge of ink that is Pete leaning into a microphone stand, her face scrunched screaming behind her messy bangs. She imagines what it must feel like to be that kind of girl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So do you like it???
> 
> Chapter 2 coming... eventually. I just got settled into my new place after moving cross-country (that's right, you don't have to listen to me carp about Mississippi anymore!) and I'm diving back into my WIPs with enthusiasm. I'm also organizing a charity fanworks project for this fall, which you can learn more about and volunteer for [here](https://ficagainstfascism.wordpress.com/get-involved/). 
> 
> Glad to be back!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Pete and Jo decide to become scene Spice Girls, Andy does not wish to join yet another crappy band, and Pat fails to keep her mouth shut in a Borders bookstore.

 

It’s August, sticky and close. Jo and Pete are sheltering in the air conditioning of the Virgin Megastore on Michigan Ave. Pete’s told her she can pick any record she wants as a birthday gift, but Jo knows Pete will tease her for whatever she chooses. Pete has the worst music taste of anyone Jo has ever met. They’ve been friends for about a year, now. In two weeks Jo will be seventeen.

“You know what I’m sick of?” Pete says, studying the back of a Dead Can Dance record. Pete’s not usually a complainer, especially not on beautiful days at the dwindling end of summer. Jo takes note.

“What?”

“Hardcore dudes.” Pete puts the album back with no apparent regard for how loud she’s speaking, or the glares she’s drawing from nearby white men. Pete is kind of Jo’s idol when it comes to blissful disregard of men.

“Stop going home with them, then,” Jo teases, because when Pete isn’t blissfully disregarding men, she’s usually being a big slut.

Pete is frowning off into the middle distance. “No, I mean it. I’m so over this scene where like, it’s all about suffering and pain being virtuous, and anybody who isn’t angry all the time must be an idiot. It’s not _fun_. I can’t even talk til past noon most days, my throat gets so shredded at practice. Isn’t that dumb? It’s like everybody’s trying to be Holden Caulfield and, like, that dude sucks. I want nice things. I want to be happy.”

Jo rifles through the rack she’s at, finds a Britney Spears album and offers it to Pete. “Here, Bubblegum. Have some rainbows.”

Pete is looking from Britney to Jo like at least one of them is a genius.

“Jo. Jo. Want to start a girl band with me?” Pete’s a little breathless with excitement.

“Like the Spice Girls?”

“Like _scene_ Spice Girls.”

Jo’s starting to get excited too. Hardcore dudes are the _biggest_ bummer. They always need to feel like the best at things, even when Jo’s better; they’re always elbowing her in the boob or quizzing her about bands she knows more about than they do or leering at her and her friends and expecting them to be flattered. Jo’s gone on a few dates with scene guys—don’t tell her mom—and they mostly just want to talk about how dark and angsty they are. They always, always change the subject when she tries to talk about herself. And she’s really, really, _really_ tired of having her ass groped when she’s on the barrier at a show. There’s nowhere to run and it makes them bolder. Like, she’s not giving up front row Antiflag over some practitioner of frotteurism, but if she feels a dick on her butt cheek she’s going to punch it. That’s just the way it is.

“Chicago softcore,” Jo says. “Like, what everyone else is doing, but—fun. Joyful.”

Pete’s nodding so hard her head’s going to come off. “It’ll be like satire,” she says, “but with pop hooks.”

Jo takes back the Britney album. “Buy me this for my birthday,” she says.

Pete lets out a little whoop of excitement. Young and reckless and without a fuck to spare, they race to the register. They are chased by white men’s glares.

*

When Pat sees Pete at her high school one Wednesday afternoon, it’s a little bit like Kathleen Hanna showing up in Glenview South gym shorts with a basketball. Pat is just—not prepared. The nighttime world of sneaking out and hardcore shows and rediscovering her real skin each time she throws herself into the pit—it might as well be another planet, another dimension, another _life_ . That’s how far removed she keeps it all, in her head, from the shithole that is high school. Petra Wentz, _here_ ? Pat’s wearing a fucking sunflower print sundress over jeans, for god’s sake. Pete Wentz could not possibly exist _here_.

But she does. While Pat quietly has a heart attack on the front lawn and vaguely tries to hide behind the flagpole, a notion that is doomed from the start, Pete leans out the back window of a deeply crappy red Trans Am with window tints and hollers, “TROOOOOOHMAN!” into the autumn air. Whoever’s driving leans on the horn.

Pat will have to walk past them if she’s going to catch her bus. But her feet won’t move. It’s not like she’s spent a lot of time imagining meeting Pete—okay, she kind of has—but she always thought she’d look. Well. _Cool_. That it would be after an Arma Angelus show, and she’d be wearing the coolest t-shirt in her collection (currently: a Purple Rain tour shirt from 1984) and her favorite Vans and would be magically sweat-free, and she’d say something intelligent and witty and heartfelt about Pete’s music, and not blurt out anything about Pete being her hero, and they would become best friends and under Pete’s mentorship Pat would become the next, like, Ani DeFranco. She definitely didn’t think it would be on the front lawn of her fucking high school while she was dressed in this stupid sunflower dress her mom bought for her and occasionally guilts her into wearing.

So she lingers by the flagpole, hoping the earth swallows her up, horrified at the prospect of being seen yet unable to look away.

She watches a girl from her year, Jo Trohman, run to the car, her dark curls streaming behind her. She’s grinning. She knows exactly how cool it is to be picked up on campus by someone with a red car and a loud muffler, someone who isn’t even in high school. Pat’s stomach is a sour pit of jealousy when the door opens and Pete’s there, smacking a kiss to Jo’s hand and hauling her inside. Pat didn’t realize Pete dated girls. High school girls. She thinks adjacent to that piece of information because she does not know what else to do with it. She can hear the sound of all the girls in the car laughing as the door slams and the Trans Am peels away.

Pat doesn’t know anything about Jo Trohman, really, but that doesn’t stop her from suddenly, desperately, wanting her life.

*

trohwoman91 (23:07:31) : seriously jion r band

trohwoman91 (23:07:35) : *join

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:08:02) : ummmm what band is that

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:08:15) : do u mean u and pete in ur garage

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:08:22) : with no other people

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:08:27) : or instruments

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:08:33) : or songs

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:08:39) : or gigs

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:08:51) : is that the band u mean

trohwoman91 (23:08:58) : f uuuuuuuuuuuuu

trohwoman91 (23:09:05) : im serios andrea

trohwoman91 (23:09:08) : *serious

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:09:25) : DO NOT

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:09:27) : CALL ME

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:09:29) : ANDREA

trohwoman91 (23:09:45) : drive to illinois and make me stop

trohwoman91 (23:09:52) : andrea

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:10:11) : see like

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:10:18) : this kind of shit is y i don’t wanna be in a band with u

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:10:32) : u guys are assholes

trohwoman91 (23:10:50) : but andy

trohwoman91 (23:10:53) : well suck without u

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:11:05) : u suck no matter what

trohwoman91 (23:11:22) : i miss you

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:11:34) : college is dumb. summer was better

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:11:45) : i’m coming down this weekend for a show

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:11:51) : we’ll hang out?

trohwoman91 (23:12:12) : we better

trohwoman91 (23:13:05) : but srly about our band

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:13:24) : talk to me when it even has a name dude

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:13:31) : im busy enough with bands that r

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:13:33) : u know

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (23:13:35) : REAL

trohwoman91 (23:13:40) : OH MY GOD SHUT UUUUUUUP

trohwoman91 (23:13:49) : FORGET I EVEN ASKDE

trohwoman91 (23:13:52) : *asked

*

Pat’s not _stalking_ Jo. She’s not. She just _happens_ to like shopping at the Borders bookstore in Wilmette where Jo _happens_ to work. It’s not a big deal. Like, she worked hard to get this dumb driver’s license, and car insurance is mad expensive. She might as well use it.

She has this kind of ritual, actually. She likes to go on Thursdays after school, flip through the music magazines, drool over the new release albums she’d buy if she ever had any money. The music section of this Borders is really nice. They have all these listening stations, big black headphones that will play a couple songs from any album you scan. Plus she can look at fantasy novels on the way out and figure out what she wants to get from the library for the weekend.

Okay, it sounds stupid. But that’s Weeknight Pat, School Pat, the version of Patricia Stump everyone else sees. It’s not til she’s crammed into a tiny all-ages venue losing herself in the thick, reverberating noisecore and projectile misery of a show that she can feel her real self stir, under all the shyness and other people’s expectations.

Pat’s life has gotten a lot better in the last year, actually. Ever since she first saw Arma Angelus play and realized her life’s ambition wasn’t just to fool around with music, it was to _be a musician_ . Ever since she saw Pete Wentz own the stage and work the room and decided that’s what she wanted to learn how to do. She’s made some progress on it. She goes out for bands every chance she gets, and she’s drummed for a few—small ones, shitty ones, one-offs that don’t go anywhere. One of her bands even made a _cassette_ . She was a _website_. Okay, she has a free mp3.com page with some crappy recordings she made on her dad’s computer one weekend at his apartment. But she’s working on it.

When she shows up at gigs, when she’s Weekend Pat, there are people she can talk to now. Friend-types, people who know her and don’t mind talking music with her. People who might even respect her opinion. Nobody’s too loud at a show: you have to shout just to be heard. She doesn’t sit with the band jerks anymore, either. Now she eats the sandwiches her mom makes at the end of a motley table of kids who go out to shows: grunge kids, goth kids, rave kids, the odd Christian metalhead. Maybe by the time she’s in a real band, she’ll finally have something to write songs about.

But none of that makes her cool enough to have shit to do on a Thursday night. So she’s got her hands full of books she loved as a kid, Tamora Pierce mostly, when on the other side of the bookshelf she hears some guy talking about Neurosis, a post-metal band from Oakland she’s kind of into. Sounding exactly like a dude, he’s going on pedantically about East Bay hardcore, and Pat’s opinions just like, come online all at once. Like, we’re talking rocket thrusters here. They’ve gotta come out of her mouth just to relieve the pressure.

She pops her head around the end of her aisle, clutching like, five Circle of Magic books to her chest, and blurts out, “Um actually, Neurosis hasn’t been punk rock since like, the 90s? They’re pretty much experimental sludge metal since Souls of Zero. Like, they’ve been hugely influential in shaping what post-metal even _sounds_ like today. You probably wouldn’t be wearing that Tool shirt without them.”

Now that these words have exploded out of her face, who should she find in the next aisle than some scrubby-bearded dude and Jo Trohman in a Borders polo and nametag? Too late, Pat clams up. Her cheeks burn with blush. She totally just steamrolled this—this customer service interaction.

Jo looks from the guy to Pat and back again, something hovering around the edges of her mouth. She’s at an awkward angle to the guy and has a price gun in one hand and a Dune box set in the other, like she was accosted by some know-it-all customer while she was trying to stock shelves. Only Pat doesn’t know whether it’s herself or the dude that’s the know-it-all customer in this scenario.

Then Jo starts cackling, this totally blissful, mean laughter pouring out of her. “Oh my god, are you _mansplaining_ right now?” she crows. “Did you literally just ‘um actually’ mansplaining to do, like, even more mansplaining?”

The dude looks increasingly put out as Pat starts laughing too. “Uh, I’m kind of pretentious about music,” she says.

Jo’s grinning. “You totally should be! I see you in here all the time listening to records. You probably know the whole inventory by now. You play in Grinding Process, don’t you?”

Pat is actually pretty floored that Jo knows anything about her. She tries to be casual about it. “Small scene, I guess. Yeah, I do. Um. We kind of suck.”

The dude with incorrect opinions about the classification of Neurosis has been totally sidelined by this point. If he was attempting to impress Jo—and Pat can see why he’d want to, Jo is obviously and effortlessly cool—that’s pretty much over.

“You don’t! Here’s how much you don’t suck. I’m like, starting this band where instead of serious, it’s just fun? And we need a drummer—well, I’m trying to get my friend Andy to drum, but she’s being a dick about it—and we need a guitarist and a singer.” Jo pumps her eyebrows suggestively. “We want to do this sort of fast, poppy, smart hardcore thing? Seriously, it’s gonna be awesome.”

This is too much to process, like, as a whole unit, so Pat sticks to disambiguating genre conventions, since she’s already established a strong basis for that in this conversation. “You mean kinda like The Get-Up Kids?” she asks.

Jo flaps a supremely dismissive hand at the comparison. “Nah, they’re just doing what girl bands have always done. It’s like—the hardcore scene is so like, self-obsessed and close-minded right now, like it’s all about drawing lines in the sand and saying who’s tough and who’s a poser and who can scream the loudest and whose pain is like, the most impressive? So we figured, fuck it. Let the dudes do their Holden Caulfield thing if they want to. We’re gonna do something better.” Then she laughs, breaking up her own sermon. “I mean, we’re definitely gonna be shit, and they’ll laugh us out of every venue. But it’s better than just doing the same old thing over and over in mediocre screamo bands with boys, you know?”

Pat’s brain is just now catching up to the part where Jo possibly invited her to try out for this band. She’s not convinced it sounds any better than the band she’s already in—it sounds a little doomed, to tell the truth, whereas Grinding Process already has a cassette out—but she does like Jo. Desperately. And she wants Jo to like her.

“So wait. Who’d you say was in it with you?” she asks.

“I’m lead guitar,” Jo says confidently, “and my friend Pete’s on bass. Pete Wentz? You’ve probably seen her, she’s in like every band?”

Pat chokes just a little. It is very (she hopes) subtle. “Yes,” she somehow manages to say. In the greatest understatement of her life, she says, “I’ve seen her.”

Pat doesn’t care what kind of music they want to play. She’s trying out for this band.

*

Pete has her feet up on the dash of Jo’s mom’s car and she’s drumming on her own knobby knees, exposed by her rucked-up soccer shorts. She smells of grass stains and sweat, fresh from practice. Her muddy cleats rolls around in the backseat.

“Thanks for the ride, Soccer Mama,” Pete says cheerfully.

Jo burned a special mix CD just for the occasion. It’s sports-themed jams, mostly. She turns up the volume for the Bulls theme song, which is frankly a showstopper every time, no matter how often she picks Pete up from practice. And she’s been doing that a lot these days. Pete’s life is a long and creative list of car breakdowns and license suspensions.

Pete decides the next stoplight is the most appropriate place to change out of her smelly jersey. The car next to them erupts into honks and cat calls at the sight of her pink Nike sports bra. Pete blows them a kiss and shakes her cleavage at them before shrugging into a clean Girls Gone Wild shirt.

“For god’s sake,” Jo rolls her eyes. “Have you no shame?”

“They started it,” Pete insists, grinning wickedly. Jo pulls away from the intersection with more oomph than is strictly necessary, leaving the carful o’ pervs behind.

“Well, try not to be a massive ho for like, one hour of your life, okay? I was listening to Pat’s stuff online and she’s like, actually good. Anyway, you’re gonna like her. She talks almost as much as you. This could be our drummer. ”

“I know lots of drummers,” Pete says, unconcerned. “I’ll be a ho if I want.”

“You are literally the worst person in the world,” Jo says fondly. “I don’t know why I even talk to you.”

Still bickering, they turn into Pat Stump’s subdivision. There’s just something in the air that day, Jo thinks. It feels like fate.

*

The door swings open on this short ginger chick dressed like a golfer/schoolgirl mashup in knee socks, shorts, and a sweater vest, and Pete thinks they have the wrong house. This is _not_ the drummer of their hardcore pop girl band, that much is obvious.

The girl licks her ridiculously shiny lips as if Pete wasn’t already distracted by them and shunts her long bangs out of her eyes.

“Um, hi,” she squeaks.

“Pat!” Joe greets her exuberantly, pretty clearly trying to make up for the way Pete’s just staring. Pat’s eyes are like worn sea glass, Pete thinks. Blue and green and pale and gold all at once. She wonders what color they’d be without the garish pumpkin-colored sweater vest.

“This is Pete,” Jo adds, when it becomes apparent Pete’s not going to introduce herself. Look, Pete’s sort of a minor celebrity at this point; if Pat knows as much about music as Jo thinks she does, she probably already knows about Pete. There’s not much Pete needs to say. Like a foul smell, her reputation has the tendency to precede her. There’s something about this kid, Pete thinks.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” Pete asks rudely at the same time Pat says, “I’ve seen you at shows.”

That should put the matter to rest, should quiet the niggling sense of—not familiarity, but a kind of deja vu—coming off Pat. But Pete doesn’t think that’s it. There’s something tight in her belly, a rollercoaster nervousness, like standing in front of Pat is the edge of something. A brink.

Whatever it is, Pete plunges over it recklessly, like she always does. They follow Pat into her basement. She has a nice little corner of instruments, plainly gleaned from yard sales and hand-me-downs and the used section at music stores. There’s a trumpet, a deeply scarred acoustic guitar, an aged electric Fender, a battered stand-up keyboard, and a Frankensteined drum kit.

Jo, easy and likeable in all the ways Pete is difficult, has her hands on the Fender immediately. She chatters happily about bands and the weekend’s upcoming gigs and Pat dives into the conversation with gusto. They have the excitable back-and-forth of young girls unobserved, not quite believing they really get to live these lives. They look so comfortable together, it’s like they’ve known each other for three lifetimes.

Shit like this is Pete’s favorite thing about the Chicago scene. Girls are _so important_. Still, Pete feels a weird snarl of something like jealousy stick in her throat. People—other women especially—they’re not easy like that for her. Or: she’s not easy like that for them. She crosses her arms over her chest, retreating for safety into her well-worn posture of Tough Bitch.

Pat’s blushing before she even starts to play. She settles on her stool behind her kit, rubs awkwardly at the back of her neck. Then she launches into the drumline of a Motion City Soundtrack song. It is… rough. It is clearly not the kind of shit she usually plays. Pete grimaces openly, shaking her head, when Pat tries B*Witched next. She’s got the speed, sure, but she plays it clean and precise, overly technical, and you can tell from across the room she doesn’t feel it.

“I don’t know _what_ my associate told you,” says Pete, suspiciously eyeing Jo, “but that is… No. That’s not what this band is about. What else can you do?”

Pat looks totally flustered. The way her face flares bright with blood is like, an illustrated diagram of all the ways in which women are more attractive than men. Pete has no need for any such diagram.

“Um, well I usually drum for hardcore bands,” Pat starts.

“No,” Pete interrupts, sharper than she means it. “Like. Do you play any of these other instruments? Do you sing? Because we need a singer and a guitarist too.”

Pat goes 90% blush and 10% knee sock. “I play all of it,” she mumbles. “I sing okay for back-up. I’m a drummer, though. I want to be a drummer.”

Jo physically presses the acoustic guitar into Pat’s hands. She’s basically vibrating, that’s how excited she is about all of this. “Please?” she pushes. “I heard your MP3s. I think you’re really good. Please sing? Pete’s way less of a bitch than she’s acting, I swear.”

Jo aims a glare at her. Pete smiles artificially, showing each of her teeth, just to be a pain in the ass. “The intersection of punk rock and boy bands definitely requires gang vocals,” she says. “So let’s hear it.”

“So like. Fast, melodic hardcore about feelings? Okay. I can do that,” Pat mutters, apparently to herself. It is with a look of deep mistrust that Pat straps on the guitar, mentally selects a song, and begins to strum. She holds Pete’s gaze with unexpected steel throughout the opening chords of All-Star Me. She looks away just before she opens her mouth to sing.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this story and I love all of you. I'll be back soon with the next installment. In the meantime, check out [the charity fan drive](www.ficagainstfascism.wordpress.com) I'm organizing and consider volunteering as a creator or commissioning work as a donor!


	3. Chapter 3

 

“Are you free tonight?”

It’s 6pm on a Wednesday. Pat just got off the phone with Jo three minutes ago. Jo called to tell her Ben, the guy they have on drums, bailed again, so practice is cancelled. They’re trying to be a five-piece band, but at least two of their pieces are proving to be super unreliable. _That’s why I keep saying no dudes_ , Pete has said, like, two hundred times. They have successfully had about four practices. They have one and a half crappy songs. Pat is _so_ not feeling this band.

They don’t even have a name.

But nobody told Pete the band is falling apart faster than she can put it together, apparently, because here she is, calling Pat’s house. “Pat? Are you free?” she asks again.

“I have chemistry homework,” Pat says cautiously. She hasn’t known Pete long and she’s still a little (a lot) starstruck by the older girl, but she already knows it’s wise to have an escape route planned anytime Pete asks an open-ended question.

“Okay, well, fuck that. There’s a movie you need to see. Immediately.”

Pat tries to convey all the soul-deep weariness of being an unpopular junior in high school in the Chicago suburbs and, on top of that, being asked to deal with Pete’s demands, in a single sigh. “I’m not going to a movie by myself,” she says.

“Of course you aren’t, dork. You’re going with me.”

Pat, who’s pretty sure Pete doesn’t even like her, is so surprised she loses all control over what comes out of her mouth.

It’s “Yes.”

 

An hour later she’s buying them popcorn at the movie theater, because Pete was really aggressive about buying her ticket and Pat doesn’t want the obligation of owing her. To be perfectly honest, she doesn’t want anything holding her back if she decides to bolt from this band. Not even the price of a movie ticket.

“Tell me again why we’re seeing Josie and the Pussycats?” Pat asks.

Pete flips her hair out of her eyes and gives Pat a shiny, glossed smirk. “All will be revealed,” she intones dramatically. She shepherds Pat into the theater.

Pete’s wrist-deep in the popcorn bucket before they’re even through the previews, which violates basically every rule Pat has about popcorn. She tries to shift the bucket out of Pete’s reach, hissing, “There won’t be any left by the time the movie starts!” but Pete just flops across Pat’s lap and lays on her, shoveling popcorn into her mouth by the handful. Pat has no choice but to abandon her movie snack principles before Pete eats literally all of it. They brush buttery knuckles in the bucket, making Pat feel like an electrical socket someone jabbed a fork into. She just can’t relax around Pete. They’ve hung out a handful of times for crabby, discordant band practices, but this is the first time it’s been just the two of them. Pat keeps stealing glances at Pete’s pretty face, keeps finding Pete watching her instead of the screen.

“What?” she finally hisses.

“Shut up,” Pete whispers back, grinning. “The movie’s starting.”

The movie is dumb, but a glorious kind of dumb. Pete periodically clutches Pat’s arm, digging in her nails and whispering, “Are you _hearing_ this music?” or “Let’s get cat ears for our first gig” or “Seriously, you have to let me name the band Du Jour.” It’s hard to concentrate on the movie or the music or anything, really, when Pete is fidgeting this close to her, but Pat thinks she hears it, the thing Pete’s so excited about. There’s something simple and brilliant and fun about the songs in this movie, about the way they’re mixed and the playfulness of the choruses. When she’s not thinking about how close Pete is sitting, Pat’s brain starts working on how to break this down and use it in their music. She feels a spark of something, chasing beneath her skin, clenching heretofore inactive muscles low in her belly. Excitement about the band, probably. It’s the first time she’s felt anything like it.

By the time the movie’s over, it’s late and Pat’s unaccountably exhausted, like the experience of sitting in a movie theater just stripped her totally ragged. She’s thinking about school in the morning and the chemistry homework she still has not actually done. Next to her, though, Pete is bouncing on her toes.

“You’re _my_ number one with a bullet,” Pete quotes the movie happily. She keeps grabbing onto Pat’s arm. “I knew it when I heard you sing. I’ve, like, never been around someone who could _sing_ like you. Melodic singing doesn’t exist in hardcore, you know? We all just fucking yell. But you, Pat! You are fucking _talented_. We’re going to take over the world without even using brainwashing headphones. We’ll just use you.” She shakes her head, just fucking grinning.

Pat is deeply uncomfortable with this entire situation. She pulls her sleeves down over her hands, not able to meet Pete’s eyes. Of all days not to wear a hat. “I think I heard what you were talking about,” she mumbles awkwardly. “Maybe we can work on putting it into our next song?”

But Pete’s still rambling. “And god _damn_ , Rosario Dawson, am I right? How hot was she? _Totally_ in love with Josie the whole movie. They should’ve gotten together. It would have been such a better ending. And _such_ a better kiss. Mmm.”

Pat’s brain stumbles, stops. Her whole skin is standing at attention, every hair follicle fucking saluting. Her pulse suddenly sounds very loud and close. Pete is—yes, just to confirm, Pat has no reason to think she is hallucinating—Pete is talking about girls being hot. Pete is talking about girls getting together at the end of a film. Pete is talking about _girls kissing_. Pat has forgotten how to breathe.

“Look at your face!” Pete smacks her arm gently. “God, homophobe.”

Pat doesn’t even have the bandwidth to protest as she follows Pete, still chattering, out of the theater.

*

College is not everything Andy ever dreamed it would be.

So a few weeks ago, she was at home for spring break, and her band had a show and her mom and stepdad wanted to come to it. That would’ve been fine, except as soon as the set was over, Andy’s mom started in.

“Your band doesn’t seem very popular, sweetie,” she said. Which—fair. Her band is not. It’s got a sort of Green Day niche vibe, and they played in a college bar after a shoegaze band, and it just wasn’t really their crowd.

“We’re new,” Andy said, shrugging. “We’ll get better.”

“I just worry this kind of thing distracts from your studies,” her mom said next. Andy wondered if her mom would be so approving of her ‘studies’ if she knew about the anarcho-primitivism Andy is learning from her advanced anthro textbook. But she didn’t say that. She didn’t say anything.

Her stepdad chimed in next. “Maybe if you didn’t dress the same as them, some of these guys would want to take you on a date.” He chortled, like it was just as funny as the last seventeen times he made an unsolicited comment about her appearance.

Andy counted the number of empty glasses on their table. She got to five before she even started on beer bottles. She reminded herself that she didn’t live at home anymore, that school breaks were temporary, that she was grateful for the help with tuition.

“The girl in that first band had a skirt on,” Andy’s mom observed pointlessly. “I thought her hair was cute with all those layers. Long hair can look so nice if it’s just _styled_. Didn’t you think it was cute, Andrea?”

Andy could hear her bandmates mingling with the little crowd around them. That probably meant her bandmates could hear this super-fun exchange, too. She wished she were Pete, for a moment. In situations like this Pete always had something to say. Andy didn’t even care if she made things worse, she just wanted to have the power to _speak_.

“You know, her makeup wasn’t bad either. That might be a good look for you, dear. Of course the lipstick was a bit heavy, but I suppose that’s rock and roll for you…” On and on her mother went. Andy imagined opening her mouth, saying _you want me to get her number for you?_ or _for the nine thousandth time do not fucking call me Andrea_ or _why would I want to look like a girl when sometimes I don’t even want to be one?_. Andy imagined saying anything at all.

But she didn’t.

Getting back to school when break ended, that was supposed to be her big escape, her fucking refuge. But she wasn’t back in the dorm for more than a week when one of the girls on her floor started a rumor that Andy was spying on her while she showered. Now Andy has to get up at like, five in the morning to use the communal bathroom before anyone else gets up, otherwise people will leave to avoid her or call her a pervert or throw her clothes in a puddle and just generally behave as though she’s a sexual predator. Even at college, there are still guys who think it’s funny to ask if they can check in her panties and make sure she’s not really a dude. Even at college she’s a fucking weirdo.

Everywhere she goes, she sticks out.

Pete comes up for the weekend and sits with her for hours while Andy gets the linework done for her first tattoo. Andy has the notion of getting for herself a new skin, one that fits her better. She doesn’t think the needle hurts at all. Not by comparison.

Pete crashes on her dorm floor until Andy’s roommate, who is very blond and very well liked and very awful, looks at Pete like she’s a zoo animal and says, “You guys aren’t gonna like, fuck in here while I’m sleeping, are you?”

Calmly, Pete stares right into her eyes and says, “We might.” After that Cami finds somewhere else to spend the weekend, and Pete doesn’t have to sleep on the floor anymore. She seems to take special pleasure in dirtying Cami’s sheets.

Andy stares at the underside of the top bunk that night and says, “You make it seem so easy to be you.”

Up where Andy can’t see her, Pete laughs without joy. “Well, it’s not,” she says.

For some reason, Andy finds that very comforting.

*

Their first gig is a complete disaster. Everyone expects the band to just peter out and die afterwards. They still don’t even have a _name_ , let alone a regular roster or any good songs. (They billed themselves as _As If_ for today’s show, which is feeling a little too on the nose after how improbably bad they just were.) But Jo refuses to give in to Sudden Rock Band Death.

The van Jo’s mom helped her buy is all strained silence and sulking out the window on the drive home from DePaul. Pete’s probably already snug back in her dorm, but the kids from the ‘burbs have 30 more minutes of awkward misery to look forward to.

“I don’t even know if I want to _do_ this band,” Pat says gloomily, which is also what she has said after basically every practice.

“Don’t worry. You do,” Jo tells her firmly. Then, for extra incentive, she adds, “I told Garrett Hughes you were doing this band with me and he was, like, _very_ impressed.”

Jo watches Pat’s face. A look of reassessment has replaced the grumpy sulk of a moment ago. “Garrett Hughes?” she repeats. “Like—tall, cool Garrett with the curly hair? The one with like 10 different Nirvana shirts?”

“The very same,” says Jo. She’s not even lying, actually—just judiciously applying truth. But she totally will lie about this sort of thing in the future, now that she knows Pat finds the attention of cute boys motivating. Jo’s going to make this band work, damn it. She’s never had her own band before. She’s determined it be a good one.

“Well, I definitely don’t want to do this band anymore,” says Ben from the backseat. “I don’t care what Garrett Hughes thinks. I quit.”

“Goddamnit,” Jo remarks softly to herself.

Twenty minutes of awkwardness to go.

 

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Pat says. The doubt in her voice could curdle milk. Jo, who has just slapped a sheet of paper headed Talent Show Sign-Ups onto the cafeteria table in front of Pat, has had, like, _more_ than enough negativity from Patricia M. Stump. She’s not taking no for an answer. So she hooks her chin over Pat’s shoulder, jams a pencil into Pat’s right hand, and lifts Pat’s arm from behind like a puppetmaster. She flails Pat’s arm over the page. Pat fights to keep the pencil tip off the paper, laughing.

“Are you kidding?” Jo says into her ear. “This is the _best_ idea. This is what it’ll feel like when you sign up. Look, if you would just use the pencil, it would already be done.” Jo puppets a big, flourishly signature in the air over the page. Pat makes no effort to assist in the movement of her own limbs.

“Jo? No,” says Pat. She’s blushing so hard Jo can feel the heat on her own cheek. “I hate being on stage.”

“ _Exactly._ That’s why you need this. You were miserable at our show, right?”

“It was a miserable show.”

“And there were only like, 15 people there. So imagine the whole _school_ staring at you while you sing.”

“Wow, it’s like you’ve actually been in my nightmares. Maybe this conversation is a nightmare right now.”

Jo pinches Pat’s arm, hard. Pat jumps in her seat, yelping a protest. “Awake now,” Jo says sweetly. “C’mon, Patricia. Do the talent show and crowds of 15 won’t scare you into forgetting lyrics anymore.”

Pat scowls blackly at the reminder of one of the many things that went wrong at their gig. But it works. She tightens her grip on the mechanical pencil with the comportment of a Civil War soldier in a surgeon’s tent. She scribbles her name on the sign up sheet.

“Good girl,” Jo chirps. Then she sits down, which she’s never done at Pat’s table before.

Together, they eat lunch.

*

“Did you go see Josie and the Pussycats like I asked?”

“Pete? I’m not joining your band.” Andy smiles, alone in her room, at Pete’s frankly remarkable ability to persist against all odds.

“Just go see it, okay?”

The truth is, Andy hasn’t gone out and done much of anything lately. She hasn’t made the drive down to Chicago in weeks. She hasn’t really been going to her classes either. It just seems like… too much. She doesn’t want to do it anymore. She goes to band practice. She eats in the dining hall with her friend Matt. End of term is looming. She doesn’t know how to face going home.

“I’ve just been… busy,” Andy says. As lies go, this one feels true. Why else would she be so drained?

“Well I hope you’re not busy tonight,” says Pete. “I have a surprise for you.”

It’s like hearing a normal person say ‘I have a 7-foot alligator on the Atkins diet for you,’ that’s how fucking ominous _surprises_ from Pete are. Milwaukee is where Pete goes when she has boy problems or friend drama and she doesn’t want to spend the night in her own life. Andy guesses she’d be willing to drive two hours too, if it got her to a place where she didn’t feel like this.

Andy doesn’t think that place exists.

“Is the surprise eating cereal and watching 80s movies in my dorm?” Andy wants to pull away from this, too. She wants to be far away from everything, even stuff that makes her feel good. She wants to be wrapped in cotton and sealed up with packing tape, put on a nice, dark, rarely disturbed shelf, and forgotten about. Her brain moves thickly. She can’t think of an excuse. She tells the truth: “Because honestly, I just feel like shit right now. I don’t really want to be around anybody. Even you.”

There’s a pause where someone who didn’t know Pete Wentz might think she was respecting Andy’s wishes. Andy knows better.

So when Pete bursts out with, “My band has a show tonight in Milwaukee and our drummer quit and Pat’s already covering second guitar and doing vocals, so it’s not like she can reasonably cover drums too, the kid’s good but she’s not _that_ good, and—what I’m trying to say is, we need you. I need you.”

Andy groans loudly. “I’m already in like three shitty bands I hate in _this_ city, I’m not joining yours too! Are you, like, selectively deaf whenever I say that?”

“Like _you’re_ selectively deaf whenever I tell you Josie and the Pussycats is the oracular zeitgeist of a generation? _A watershed film for our times and the most important musical influence in a decade?_ No. I heard you all two thousand times you said we suck and you’d rather be in bands with stupid dudes than support your friends because you are a cold, loveless woman. I’m just asking you to cover my ass for one _night_ , here, Hurley. Can you do that for me?”

Andy rolls around uselessly on her tiny bed like it will reveal a way out of this. But friendship with Pete doesn’t work that way. They both already know she’s doing it. Pete knew before she even asked.

“Do you even have a name yet?” Andy capitulates.

“Wrists Are For Girls,” Pete says proudly.

“So, barely,” Andy mutters.

“Put on your best basketball shorts, babe,” says Pete. “We’ll pick you up at 8.”

*

The venue is small, tucked away on the corner of a street that’s half Latinx shops and half vacant, industrial spaces that have been either boarded up or illegally repurposed. The strip is dotted with tiny clubs like this one, marked by small clusters smokers out front rather than Open signs. Scanning the crowd, Pat sees mostly long-haired white dudes and a smattering of punks. There are maybe two other girls in this whole place. Neither of them looks especially friendly.

Pat can already tell they’re not going to be well-received.

The little club, a coffee shop by day, has exposed brick walls covered with fliers and posters from bands that have come through. Pat recognizes some of the names, small-time Chicago acts on their way to something bigger, including their friend Tim’s new band Rise Against. The big windows are covered by ancient-smelling velvet curtains swagged with rope lights, converting the artsy daytime coffee shop into something with a punk rock ambiance. Pat is sweating through her t-shirt before they even get through soundcheck. Again and again, she tugs her hat brim down over her eyes. She wants to be invisible.

“You okay?” asks Andy Hurley, the fill-in drummer Pat’s heard about but never really met before tonight. If even virtual strangers can tell how nervous she is, Pat knows she’s in bad shape. This is insane—this is all totally insane. How did she ever let herself get talked into being a _lead singer_?

Suddenly Pete is at her elbow, putting a drink into her hand. Pat takes a huge gulp and chokes when it hits her throat and she realizes it’s not water. Great: a coughing fit. Just what her vocal cords need right before a show. Pat gulps down more of the bitter, piny drink. Pete rubs small, soothing circles on her back. “You’re my golden ticket, Patty,” she says in Pat’s ear. “You have the voice of a literal angel. Everyone who hears it falls in love with you.”

The stage is too small for the whole band to fit on, so Pete rearranges the set-up so Pat and Andy are up on the riser and she and Jo are on the floor with the crowd. This puts a barrier of guitars between Pat and everyone else—a double-barrier, if you count her guitar, too. The intensity of her panic attack decreases by like 15% (which, realistically, is probably the best she’s gonna get in this situation).

Before she’s ready—how could she possibly ever be ready—Pete’s leaning into her microphone, the only microphone, and leering out at the crowd. “We—are—Wrists Are For Girls!” she hollers. “And we’re about to make your night!”

They open with a Sick of It All cover, probably the hardest thing on their tiny set list, and right from the start it’s clear the crowd doesn’t give a shit about them. Twenty unimpressed people sip beers and half-heartedly nod along. Pete jumps around like the floor is electrified, spins with her bass and screams her heart out, folds forward onto Jo, drops to her knees and plays to Pat’s feet. The songs slip by, one after another. Pat barely knows the words to their songs, the ones she and Pete have spent hours squabbling about. She’s glad their rhythm guitarist of the moment, a dude called T.J., has the flu: having a guitar part distracts her from her own wavering, out of tune voice.

Song by song, it gets easier. Somehow, by the time they’re transitioning into their best song, Growing Up, Pat feels looser. Almost like she’s having fun. Andy’s reliable, energetic drumbeat at her back is like an external heart, anchoring and empowering her at once. Pete hops onto the stage and sings against Pat’s neck while Pat tries to look anywhere but A) at the crowd of B) down Pete’s shirt. Later, Jo climbs the riser to scream the chorus into Pat’s mic with her, their chins knocking together. Jo’s grinning like a forest fire and Pat returns the same hungry enthusiasm with her own brutal smile. The kids out there, the ones expecting a hardcore show, they still look confused, but the energy coursing around the stage is undeniable. More and more people are nodding, dancing. They might not _like_ the music, but at least they’re acknowledging that it _is_ music. Pat’s belting her heart out and for one huge, glorious moment, she doesn’t feel afraid. It’s like her whole soul has been emptied of terror, like there’s a light shining in that illuminates her skin to skeleton, head to toe, so bright that nothing in her can cast darkness. Like she’s irradiated, like she glows on her own. Like she’s strong. Like being loud makes her that way.

For a second, for just one second, she feels like— _okay. Maybe I_ am _meant to be in this band._

Then the song’s over and their set is finished and the crowd drifts to the bar applauding with, like, relief that it’s over. Pat finds herself smashed in a hug by Jo on one side and Pete on the other, with Andy tethered to the moment by her hand in Pete’s.

“That,” Pete yells for their half-dead, ringing ears, “was fucking _perfect_!”

And Pat thinks she might be right. It kind of was.

*

It’s the first night she’s felt like a living girl and not a doll in months. Pete won’t let it end. Keeping a firm grip on Andy’s hand so she can’t run, Pete buys round after round of drinks for her girls. They melt into the crowd, which grows larger and livelier as the night wears on and the music gets better. They listen to the other bands. They meet people. They dance.

In all the revelry, Pete doesn’t forget what she’s here to do. Yes, there are many cute boys, and she’s here to flirt and fumble in the dark hallway and swap spit with them, as many as she can collect, like they’re sexy Pokemon cards. But she’s here to watch over her friends most of all, to keep 17 year old Pat and Jo safe from the wolves with glittering eyes, slavering mouths, colonizing hands. Pete is the apex predator of this club. No one’s fucking with her pack. Wolves better run.

“Don’t you have a boyfriend?” Drunk, Pat has no concept of how loud she is. Her mouth is hot and wet, close to Pete’s ear.

Pete wipes the last traces of an ill-fated make-out (and her lipstick) on the sleeve of her jean jacket. The black denim is screen-printed with a dusting of tiny silver stars. She smiles at Pat like she can feel anything at all and knocks back what’s left of her whiskey and root beer. “Fuck,” Pete says crisply, “him.” Because she’s drinking, she adds, “Everybody else is.”

And what’s ‘boyfriend’ but another word for ‘someone who fucks other girls when you’re not looking’? No, Pete doesn’t belong to anybody anymore. Not even herself. Pete leaves grim, surly Andy at the bar, saying nonsensically, “Be our lighthouse. Guide us home” before she drags Pat out onto the cramped, sweaty dance floor.

Jo, of course, is already in the center of it, just as drunk as Pat and spinning like she personally was elected club disco ball. Pete grabs Jo by the hips and dances up on her, laughing when Jo realizes it’s her and starts grinding and booty popping with abandon. They dance til the club seems to spin of its own accord, three girls linked by heat and heartbeat and meant to be. Pete feels like the brightest thing in the room. She tips her head back, shows her throat to the ceiling ‘cause the sky’s all that she’ll submit to, laughs and laughs. If enough people see her having a good time, she must be. Happiness is brittle and splintery. It’s other people’s eyes that make things real.

Pete gets distracted for a little while by a Tall Dark and Random who hooks her by the belt loops and moves his body with a passion that moves her in return. She feels manageable under his big hands—like she can be broken down, bite-size, and swallowed. It is good to feel hands on her, like someone else is holding her together for once. His mouth is on her neck, stubble and teeth, and she thinks about how soft and vulnerable she is in all the places she gives away, how bitter and rough she is in those few hardscrabble places she keeps for herself. She’s just drunk enough to be strung between caring too much about everything and not caring about anything. His hands on her body either feel good or like nothing at all.

Then she hears Pat’s voice, loud and hoarse from the night’s exertions, rising in protest. “Hey! I said fuck off!”

Pete’s eyes snap open. Her mission, she forgot her fucking mission. She’s a wolf-eater. She doesn’t get to close her eyes. She scans the crowd, which suddenly feels claustrophobically close, and doesn’t see Pat anywhere. She elbows her way through soft currents of other people’s bodies. She catches a few elbows back. “Let go, asshole!”

Thank god Pat’s so loud. Pete fights her way towards a dark corner of a club that is suddenly 90% dark corners. Finally she breaks out of the crowd and finds Pat, shoved up against coarse brick and boxed in by a sticky-topped table. A burly dude in a Replacements vest with a tall green mohawk blocks her in.

“C’mon,” the big guy is saying. His hands are on her. “We were having such a good time before.”

Pete doesn’t think. Her brain is swirling way too fast and red. She reaches up and grabs the collar of his vest, rips with all her might. Off-balance, the punk turns his face towards her and Pete just fucking swings, wild and unaimed. “She said no, motherfucker!” she snarls like she’s Sam Jackson. Her fist explodes into the dude’s eye socket. She doesn’t even pause to feel the pain of the impact. She jerks on his collar again, throws him at the floor. He hits it hard. This, _this_ is why her boots have steel toes. Blind with fury, she starts kicking. She lands blow after blow in his ribs while blood streams from his face and her fist, slicking the floor. “You bitch!” he howls, trying to get to his feet. She glances a kick off his jaw and he goes back down. He cries out. She screams louder.

Pete might kill him—she doesn’t fucking care, and how dare he touch Pat in the way so many people have touched Pete, without her permission, while she said _stop_ —but the guy who was collecting cover at the door pulls her off. Pete tries to hit him, too, when suddenly Andy’s got her in a bear hug. She could jackknife, try to break free, but all at once the fight’s gone out of her.

Pete’s still breathing so hard her whole body shakes when she’s out on the curb. The door guy watches her, glaring, while Andy goes back into the club to collect Jo. Pat shivers on the sidewalk next to her, her skin flushed like sunburn and her eyes shiny. There’s a hickey blooming like a rose on her neck and Pete’s too furious to speak, thinking of the other marks that scumdick might have left on her. Pete can’t stand to look at her.

A small, soft touch alights on Pete’s arm: Pat’s hand. Pete stares at it. “I’m okay,” Pat says. Then somehow, quietly, she laughs. “You saved me.”

That laugh—that laugh is all the proof in the world that nothing has ever happened to Pat that she couldn’t wash off. That the things that have been done to Pete—taken from Pete—it means that Pat is safe. Pat is whole.

Without meaning to, Pete is hugging Pat tight, holding onto her like she’s the last thing in the world that can anchor Pete to Earth. Without meaning to, Pete is crying.

“This is stupid,” Pete half-laughs, half-weeps into Pat’s shoulder. “What am _I_ crying about?”

Pat holds her awkwardly. They do a strange little sidewalk sway. “I don’t think we’ll be invited back to that club,” she says.

It’s the funniest thing either of them have ever heard. They laugh until they collapse, tangled up and snot-streaked and clutching their stomachs on the concrete. That’s how Andy and Jo find them. From the sound of it, Jo is enthusiastically re-enacting the fight sequence with some _possibly_ embellished Mortal Kombat-esque flairs. Andy holds on to her by the shoulder, looking less amused than Pete’s ever seen her.

“Your band,” Andy says drily, “is a fucking joke.”

“Actually,” Pete says from the ground, “that’s the best show we’ve ever done.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Pat does the talent show and gets the guy, and also in which Pete’s seen her boyfriend and doesn’t think he treats her right.
> 
> Check out the [accompanying playlist!](https://open.spotify.com/user/marvelgirl238/playlist/7Ja7oPJdFfVAjnYiAjgvRj)
> 
> If you want your very own custom Peterick-or-otherwise fic from yours truly (or any number of other fanworks from other super talented folks), consider donating to the [Fic Against Fascism charity drive!](https://ficagainstfascism.wordpress.com/request/)

 

“I _really_ don’t think this is a good idea,” moans Pat. She stands in the wings of the big stage in the school gymnasium. She’s sweating tidally and she’s not even under the lights yet. She’s regretting that she ever let Jo talk her into this. She’s regretting that she met Jo at all.

Jo’s hands are firmly on her shoulders. Maybe it’s meant to be comforting, but it seems more like enforcing. Like, Jo is going to push her out into the spotlight like an oncoming train if that’s what it comes to. No escape.

“You’re going to kill it up there,” Jo tells her confidently. Pat’s got armpit slicks a mile wide. Her limbs are shaking, her innards cramped. She opens her mouth but no sound comes out. There’s no way she’s going to be able to sing.

There’s no way she’s going to be able to sing _in front of the entire school._

There’s no way she’s going to be able to do it alone.

Desperately, Pat clasps one of Jo’s steely hands. She whirls, pulling the hand to her chest, her knees knocking like they might give. “You have to come with me,” she squeaks. Her voice cracks like a fucking arpeggio of humiliation.

“You have to do this alone, young padawan,” Jo says solemnly. Her face is pitiless and hard. She’s some kind of cyborg without a port for human empathy drivers. Her grip is so _strong_.

Pat’s vision is whiting out, maybe, a little, as the panic intensifies. The act on stage, the one she’s supposed to follow, is bowing to lukewarm applause and thanking the audience over the crappy PA. Jo presses her acoustic guitar to her chest and Pat strangles her arms around its neck like it’s a flotation device. She’s alternating between being too terrified to breathe and taking huge, too-fast gulps of air. She is dizzier than a traveling carnival ride.

“Oh my god, Josephine, she’s white as a sheet,” a new voice whispers. Light-headed, Pat feels as if she turns in slow motion towards the sound. Creeping backstage like a 21 year old who’s snuck into a high school is Pete Wentz. She slinks past a velvet curtain in a way that makes her body curve and roll like a showgirl’s. Pat is too anxiety-overloaded to look away.

The stage is clearing. The emcee is saying Pat’s name. Her skin is fizzy and hot and evaporating. Soon she will float away. But there, grounding her, anchoring her to earth, comes a cool pressure on her head: Pete pulls the knit grey beanie off her own head and smoothes it down over Pat’s, tucking Pat’s shoulder-length hair just so with cool, careful fingers.

“There,” Pete says, when it’s straightened to her satisfaction. “Now you can do anything.” Before Pat can process what’s happening, like for example _why Pete is even here_ , the older girl presses a fast, firm kiss to her cheek. Pat is so hot that Pete’s lips feel chilled. Her body temperature drops twelve degrees from goosebumps. Then Pete and Jo together are shoving her out, beyond the curtains, into the spotlight. Onto the stage.

Pat’s head is whirling so fast she can’t think of what else to do. The lights in her eyes are so blinding she can barely see the crowd. She just goes ahead and does what she’s rehearsed, what she’s planned to do, a trapped animal too stunned to figure out any way to escape. That, and Pete’s eyes are somewhere in the wings. She can’t see them, but she has the sense they’re pinning her to the circumference of the earth.

Her fingers know what they’re doing. They find the chords and begin to strum. Her lips part. Her voice comes out husky from her throat, like she’s the Stevie Nicks of panic attacks. She launches into _Let’s Get It On_.

_I've been really tryin', baby_

_Tryin' to hold back this feeling for so long_

_And if you feel like I feel, baby_

_Then, c'mon, oh, c'mon_

_Let’s get it on_

*

Pat is fucking _stunning_ up there. Just. Pete cannot look away. From the bleachers, Pat doesn’t look splotchy and sweaty and scared: she looks flushed and sparkly and vibrant. (And Pete already thinks she’s cute splotchy and sweaty. It’s really unfair to ask her to deal with—with—fucking lit-from-within peaches and cream.) Pete, uncomfortable, is suddenly glad she’ll never be in the audience for one of their shows.

And the hat. Pete’s hat. And the acoustic guitar. And the low, sexy voice. And the song.

Well. Fuck.

Jo, who is innocent instead of despicable, is bouncing on the bleacher beside Pete. She keeps jabbing Pete in the side with enthusiasm, whispering “oh my god, she’s so good, are you hearing this? Did you know she was so good? Oh my god, we are so lucky” like a litany.

Pete is hearing it. Pete is recording it on her cell phone, grainy and shaky, so she can hear it again later. Because it feels like Pat is singing directly to her, even though Pat didn’t know she’d be here, even though Pat probably chose her song weeks ago under circumstances totally unrelated to Pete. Still, the immortal poet Marvin Gaye strikes her right in the heart, as the words fly from Pat’s lips and straight into Pete: _Understand me, sugar. Since we’ve got to be here, let’s live._

Pete is so fucking relieved when the song ends before she is literally consumed by hellfire. She’s a mess today. Like, moreso than usual. She doesn’t know what the fuck is happening.

She and Jo don’t just clap, they holler; they shout Pat’s name like she’s a football team and cheer raucously even after the emcee starts trying to announce the next act. They yell and whistle and stomp, pissing off everyone around them. They only stop once they feel they’ve fully expressed their enthusiasm and pride. Also once they’re laughing too hard to go on. The rest of the talent night is interminable: Pete watches mediocre bands play like four nights a week, and plays in one herself the other nights. There is nothing on offer in this high school that can top what she sees in Pat at every band practice. Pete fidgets inattentively, catching a few more jabs from Jo, counting down the acts until the show is over.

She brought roses, is the thing. It seemed like—like the thing to do. It’s not until she’s milling about the auditorium, waiting for Pat to come out from backstage, that she realizes roses are for recitals. Like, for ballerinas and, um, flautists. She is the only person lingering with a bouquet of red roses. Not even the grown men who are obviously dads in attendance brought flowers. (They did bring their open-mouthed leers, though. Pete’s in a crop bra and tiny shorts with her old prep school blazer open over the ensemble. She’s wearing a black nylon choker necklace she found in her bedroom the last time she was home. She repents nothing. Leers roll off of her at this point.)

(Or, worse: she notices them. In a sick way finds them nourishing. Like, at least she’s desirable to creepy old dudes. At least she’s something.)

(At least she exists.)

Anyway, she tries to ditch the roses discreetly, and Jo absolutely will not let her. Jo can be very pushy. Pete likes this about her. Usually. But Pete doesn’t get even a chance to give Pat the stupid flowers: no sooner does Pat appear than she is waylaid by some long-haired admirer with braces and a Kurt Cobain t-shirt. Pete expects her to shake him off, make her way over to Jo and Pete, to her friends—but Pat’s face lights up like a fucking Christmas tree. From a distance, Pete watches Pat cant her body towards DudeBro’s. She watches DudeBro touch Pat’s shoulder, slide his hand down to Pat’s arm. They talk, Pat blushing and looking at her shoes, then glancing back up through her long hair to smile and blush and start the cycle over again.

“Who is _that_ and when did he last shower?” Pete asks Jo. “C’mon, let’s go rescue her.”

But Jo grabs the back of Pete’s blazer and plants her feet. “Rescue her from _Garrett Hughes?_ Yeah right! Pat has the biggest crush on him.”

Pete wilts faster than these dumb fucking roses. They hang around the gym until Pat and DudeBro leave together, holding hands. Pat makes eye contact with Jo and Pete over her shoulder. She points at DudeBro, mouths “OH MY GOD” with obvious joy, and shrugs like she has no idea how this could have possibly happened to her.

She looks so fucking happy.

“That’s it,” Pete says, after the pair—mismatched in height and, Pete avidly hopes, everything else—are gone. “I’m ditching the roses.”

Jo fishes the bouquet out of the trash bin Pete chucks them into. Whatever. They’re her embarrassing problem now.

 

But it gets worse. Pat doesn’t just walk off into the sunset with this fucking guy; she walks back into Pete’s life with him too. Pete is curled up on the battered garage couch with Jo’s old Gameboy color, which she uncovered when rifling through the Trohman’s shit and waiting for practice to finally start. Jo’s tuning her guitar and fiddling with her amp, frowning off into space. T.J. and Mike are having a contest to see who can eat the most stale Peeps leftover from Easter.

Who should walk up the driveway but little, red-kneed Pat, with her ginger hair down around her face and a trucker cap on? She’s wearing a t-shirt, which is usual, and a skirt, which is not. She’s wearing her standard Chucks with the skirt. She is not wearing the hat Pete gave her. The bare length of her rosy calves and soft pale thighs, rarely seen, catches Pete’s attention. It’s like seeing a panda in the wild. It’s a rare and therefore special experience.

Trying to figure out at distance whether Pat’s shaved the fine gold hairs off her legs or not, Pete is so distracted she doesn’t notice the remora attached to Pat’s left arm until the unfortunate pair are practically upon her. Pat’s entire head turns the color of a strawberry as tall, lank-haired Nirvana Shirt leans down and kisses her cheek. She walks over to her mic stand, tugging at the hem of her skirt and grinning at the toes of her Chucks.

Nirvana slumps over to the couch. “Who are you here with?” he asks Pete, looking down her shirt. Before she can answer he plops himself on like, the whole fucking couch, jostling Pete and shoving his dirty sneakers in her face. “Bassist or drummer?”

Pete is so, so sick of hardcore dudes. Isn’t getting away from dudes like this why they _started_ this band? She could have gotten this shit anywhere. She _does_ get this shit, everywhere. Every time she shows up at a venue for her own shows, bands she fronts, even, bouncers try to turn her away, saying, _doors aren’t til 8, sweetheart_ . Stage managers ask her who in the band she’s dating, and if she’s ever considered how many connections guys who work at venues have for aspiring young artists. Lighting techs look at her tits. Every fucking Cro Magnon asshole in the audience wants a piece of her. Chewed, swallowed, _gone_.

Pete always found it flattering, kind of. She doesn’t know what she finds it now.

Also? Can she just say? She’s not like, a celebrity or anything? But Chicago kids who are serious about music know who Pete Wentz is. That’s just a fact. This fucking guy probably buys his Nirvana shirts at Spencer’s. He probably thinks it’s a skatewear brand. Pete doubts he can name more than two Nirvana songs. Pete doubts he can count that high. Pete, meanwhile, remembers the day Kurt died. It changed things for her. The way he meant so much to so many people, fronted the most influential rock and roll band in a decade, was the fucking pioneer of grunge as it exists today. The way he reached out to lonely kids and said, _yeah, it is fucked up. Fuck anyone who doesn’t see it. We all feel this alone, and we’re all in this together._ And then he was just—gone. Like so many others. Turned out rock stars were only mortal after all. And Pete was relieved, to tell the truth. To realize that, if she didn’t want to, she didn’t have to live past 27 either.

So this guy. This fucking guy with Kurt’s face on his chest and his dumb unwashed hair and his _braces_ and his gross lips that he’s probably slimed all over Pat by now. This guy looking at her chest and asking which member of the band she’s _fucking_.

It makes Pete feel monstrous. She wants to rend and claw and crush.

She wants to kill him.

Instead, she leans in close, smushing her tits against her own knees in a way that exaggerates them. Nirvana ogles and she smiles lasciviously. “Actually, I _am_ the bassist,” she purrs. “But if you want to know who I’m _fucking_?” Pete points. “That’d be Josephine over there.”

The pervy implications wash over his face with the slow, catastrophic inevitability of a mushroom cloud. His mouth gawps open so wide she can see straight down his esophagus. She hopes he chokes on his own tongue.

Satisfied that she’s wreaked at least a little bit of mayhem on this misogynistic greaseball, Pete hops off the couch and sashays her way over to her bass. She can feel his eyes boring into her ass cheeks the whole way. Sometimes even the gaze of men feels violent, feels like consumption.

She can’t quite bring herself to meet eyes with Jo, though. Or Pat.

 

When Nirvana returns to their next practice, and the next—when Pat is chirpy and aglow with the splendors of his affection—when Pete watches them try to walk with their hands in each other’s back pockets—when they start licking each other’s tonsils between songs—when Nirvana brings two of his greasiest friends and they goof around loudly and disrespectfully through the whole practice—

At some point or another it just becomes too much. Pete started this band to get _away_ from this kind of thing, didn’t she? And here they are, outnumbered in a garage again, with men’s eyes pawing ravenous at their flesh like it’s not their home but a fucking _market commodity_. She can’t fucking stand it. She prepares a setlist of songs about violence against men that she insists the band learn. ‘Misandry jams,’ she calls them: Bikini Kill’s White Boy, 7 Yr Bitch’s Dead Men Don’t Rape, Tori Amos’ Precious Things. When she tries to push the Dixie Chick’s Goodbye Earl next, T.J. finally revolts.

“I’m not playing fucking country. I didn’t sign up for, like, a man-hating lesbian band,” he protests.

Pete, honestly, wants to punch everyone in the face right now, including herself. “Well I did,” she snarls. “You want to fucking quit the band? Do you?”

“Crazy bitch,” mutters Mike, their latest drummer. “Shouldn’t we be working on original songs instead of memorizing a bunch of dumb girl power shit?”

“You’re right. Why sing someone else’s songs about murdering boys when I could write my own?” Pete’s getting amped up now, escalating things. She’s spoiling for a fight. _Take one step forward,_ she dares T.J. in her mind, _and I’ll knock you on your ass._ She wants him to.

But no one else is interested in fighting. “Let’s try Switchblades and Infidelity again,” Jo suggests in a placating voice. Of course, Pat has to be scraped off her fucking boyfriend’s face before they can play anything. No one seems to mind that Mike called Pete a bitch. There are way too many guys in this band, Pete decides. She was stupid to let herself feel safe.

 

In her journal that night, Pete draws knives in heavy black ink. She scribbles bile.

_wear me like a locket around your throat so i can weigh you down & watch you choke, you look so good in blue. let’s play this game called when you catch fire i won’t piss on you to put you out. wrap your car around a tree ‘cuz my makeup looks good next to your teeth. lipstick stain to match matchheads, i’ll burn you like the bridge back home. i hope you choke i hope you choke i hope you _

_CHOKE_

 

“It’s not _personal_ ,” Pete tells Andy blithely over the phone. “I just think he’s a scumbag. Like, he’s always staring at my tits when Pat isn’t looking. The other day he was  holding her _ass_ , tongue down her _throat_ , and he had his eyes open looking at me. And you should fucking hear how he talks about Courtney Love! Seriously, this guy is everything that’s wrong with dude culture in one slimy package.”

“But it’s not personal,” Andy repeats drily.

“I mean, do I think Pat could do better? Of course. But I’m not critiquing her love life. I just don’t want to see this dickweed at band practice. He’s a distraction. I think we’re actually getting worse because of him.”

“You said Pat seemed happy, right?” asks Andy, the obnoxious voice of reason.

Pete is reluctant to answer. “Very,” she mutters at last. It’s true: Pat’s been floating around grinning, the most confident Pete’s ever seen her. It shines through her skin to light the room. They’re opening at a biker bar this weekend, an exquisitely grim choice of venue, and Pat said she was _excited_ about it. Still, this Garrett kid is bad news. Pete’s sure of it.

If Pete squints hard enough, she can just about convince herself.

“I guess it’s about what matters more. Letting someone you care about be happy, or making yourself more comfortable.” Pete can tell from the shift in Andy’s tone that she’s not just talking about Garrett crashing band practice and being a skeevy, divisive nuisance anymore.

“How are things with your parents, An?” Pete hazards. She knows they’ve been harping on Andy harder than ever. Everything is under attack: her music, her friends, her clothes, her major, her social life.

Andy goes so quiet Pete knows she’s stumbled onto an open wound. “I’m looking into… alternative summer plans,” Andy says after a long pause. Pete can feel, almost by instinct, how hard it is for her to say the words. They’re too close to asking for help. Andy gets so defensive when anyone tries to help her. She responds like it’s a threat. Like it means people think she can’t do it by herself.

It is very important to Andy that she be capable of doing everything by herself. It is very important that everyone knows exactly how capable she is.

So Pete is careful in what she says next. She takes a nonchalant tone, speaks like it’s an afterthought. “Well, my summer plans are taking the band on tour. I’ll keep you in mind if we need a drummer.”

Andy doesn’t sound mad, so Pete’s offer has successfully gone under the defense system. By way of expressing gratitude, Andy makes a joke. “What’s wrong with the one you have now? It’s somebody new every week with you! Tell me you’re not sleeping with them? That really didn’t go well in Arma.”

“For your information, this one called me a crazy bitch. So he’s fucking doomed.”

“Crazy, huh?” asks Andy. “Crazy like, oh I don’t know, trying to murder a 6-foot punk in a club because he gets handsy with your tragic straight girl crush?”

Pete sputters. She doesn’t even know which part of the accusation to protest. Finally, she settles on, “I will murder anyone who touches _any_ of my friends.”

“Sure. And Patricia Stump is nothing special to you at all.” Horribly, Andy starts doing this high-pitched, nasally impression of Pete’s voice. “‘I’ve never been in the same room as someone so talented before. She sweats gold and shits sunbeams. She’s going to change the world. Andy, watch this amazing high-quality cell phone video of the most perfect moment of music to ever exist in all of human history—’”

“Oh my god, stop!”

“You’re so fucking obvious, Wentz,” Andy cackles.

But Pete didn’t know she was obvious.

Pete didn’t know there was anything to be obvious about.

*

Their live shows get substantially better after the talent show thing. Jo takes full credit for this. She is the one, after all, busting her ass to herd everyone to regular practices; to track down the flakes and hold them accountable; to farm their friends and acquaintances for a seemingly endless stream of guitar and drum fill-ins; to defuse the fucking Cold War of songwriting before Pete and Pat detonate and destroy them all.

Especially, lately, that last one.

It’s almost final exams, so Pat and Jo have been holing up in a Starbucks to work on projects and last-minute studying with the assistance of espresso. Even though Pete, a college student, should be similarly occupied, it seems like she’s constantly slumming around the suburbs. Every five minutes she’s texting Jo that she’s bored at her parents’ house and would Jo like to go driving. These messages cost Jo’s parents 10 cents each and make them seriously grumpy, but have led to a lot of nice aimless evenings in all-night diners and donut shops, making plans and dizzy daydreams for their band.

Today Jo and Pat have their favorite table, fully populated by chemistry notes and spread-eagled textbooks and a near-tactile desperation. Their empties are lining up. Jo is pretty much vibrating. But no matter how much coffee they drink, they can barely make it through a single problem before Pete finds a new way to distract them.

“I can’t believe you let her come when we were _studying_ ,” Pat accuses while Pete is busy flirting shamelessly with the barista with the visible tattoos. Pete basically alternates between slutting it up with the entire Starbucks staff, suggesting totally irrelevant formulas with apparent sincerity, and interrupting every two seconds with something about the band or a lyric or a dog she saw out the window or a dream she had, not even last night, but like, at any given point in her life.

“‘Let’ is a generous word,” Jo mutters. She’s staring at a sheet of Mole conversions that make less sense than hieroglyphics. She wants her life to end, painlessly and all at once. Chemistry tends to make her feel like this.

Pete’s ass is sticking out very far from the counter where she leans, licking whipped cream off her Frappucino straw and laughing way too loudly. Jo has ordered coffee from Tattoo McBeard over there on many occasions. He has never showed any sign of being devastatingly hilarious.

“So wait. Explain this cohesion problem to me again? And um. Start with like. Extremely basic definitions.”

Jo looks up at Pat with nightmare in her eyes. “I only barely understood it the first time I explained it,” she confesses, “and I think it’s already gone.”

They teeter between laughing and crying for a moment. Then a ridiculous trill of laughter from Pete tips them over the edge, and they collapse into hilarity on top of their papers.

“She brought you flowers, you know. To the talent show,” Jo tells Pat, when the uproar has subsided. They’re both panting to catch their breath. For some reason Jo feels like this information might repair some of the tension that’s been between them.

“Who? Madame Ass-in-the-Air?” Pat asks. That sets them off again.

“What is so funny over here? Are you done studying yet? I’m bored.” Beardy has gone back to work, and Pete has resumed her crusade to distract and destroy Jo’s grade point average. Pat looks borderline volcanic at the interruption, even though they weren’t really working, so Jo puts her pencil down and moves to defuse.

But Pete’s faster. She drops a notebook on the table in front of Pat and says, “Here. I wrote an entire song while you guys have been dicking around. Think you can write a melody that doesn’t sound totally canned for _this_ one?”

Pat’s hackles climb even higher. Jo watches them. Coming up with original songs has been a major point of contention. Pete keeps insisting that Pat’s “better than this” and “holding out on us,” neither of which accusations make Pat fun to be around. Even though Jo thinks they’re probably true. But Pete and Jo have been calling everyone, trying to set up a summer tour. They need some new fucking material. They need some songs.

“Pete, this isn’t band practice. Pat, can you help me with this stupid gas law?” Jo tries, she really does. But she can only do so much. Pat is reading the notebook page in front of her. Her face is going more and more red.

“What the fuck is this supposed to mean?” Pat demands.

Jo scoops up the notebook and scans the offending verse. It’s clear pretty quickly what’s wrong. Pete’s written:

_walking off stage tonight, i know what you’re thinking—she stands alone, she’s high on herself. but if only you knew i was terrified_

_would you mind if i sat next to you and watched you smile? so many kids, but i only see you, and i don’t think you notice me._

_well ive seen your boyfriend and i dont think he treats you right, but that’s none of my business, is it._

_i’m not the way you think i am._

_the only boy who ever gave me the time was the one who only wanted five minutes of mine. knocking boots in the back, how degrading is that? i decline._

In the bottom corner she’s signed it

_peterpan_

_the wendy darlings. 2001_

“I think it’s our new band name,” Jo jokes. “The Wendy Darlings? I don’t know, I think I like it.”

But they’re not even listening to her. They’re staring murder at each other across the table. This is how pretty much every band practice has ended in the last few weeks. Jo is not a natural peacekeeper. She’s an ideas girl, she’s their self-appointed manager, she’s the one with the motherfucking chutzpuh to make this band happen. She isn’t a babysitter.

“Do you have a problem with my boyfriend?” Pat asks levelly.

“I have a problem with the shitty songs you’ve been writing ever since you got a boyfriend,” Pete says, a hair too casually. She even affects a one-shoulder shrug.

“Oh, so you think what you’ve written here is a _good_ song?”

Pete blinks her long, mascaraed lashes at Pat. One, two, three blinks. Then she says, “Guys are gross.”

“You’d know!” The words burst out of Pat hot and molten, flung with deadly intent. Her temper is like that. Jo would recommend steering clear. The barista is hit with Pat’s most hateful scowl. Jo feels bad that he got sucked into this. Jo feels bad that they may end up banned from her favorite Starbucks. Mostly the second one.

“Meaning what?” Pete bites out.

“Meaning you’re the biggest whore in any given room and everyone knows it! You’ve never ‘declined’ once in your life! People _talk_ , Peter Pan. People _talk about you and the shit you do_ .” Pat’s voice is so loud. Everyone hears it. “So I don’t understand what the big problem is with me dating _one guy_ , once in my life.”

Pete’s eyes are starry, like maybe she’s close to tears, and Pat must notice it, because her voice is softer again when she adds, “Besides. Even if dudes _are_ gross. Who else am I going to date?”

The question settles between they three. There is a loud, loud silence.

Followed by the even louder scream of perforated paper tearing as Pete, in slow-motion, crumples the notebook page.

When Jo can’t take it anymore, she clears her throat and says briskly, “Okay, so, review problem 13. ‘Calculate the mass of magnesium oxide possible if 2.40g Mg reacts with 10.0g O2.’ Hoo boy. What do you remember about reactants?”

They get back to work.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the girls prepare for tour, each in their own way; Andy is the site of a small revolution; Pat loses her appetite; and Pete is not all right.
> 
>  
> 
> [Girl Out Boy Jams](https://open.spotify.com/user/marvelgirl238/playlist/7Ja7oPJdFfVAjnYiAjgvRj)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is the most important and nourishing thing I have ever written. It is my entire emotional life right now. I am so blown away by the response from you guys, that you're not only reading it but feeling it too. That it's resonating with your own girlhood, your own gender socialization, your own experiences. It means to much to me that I can share this with you. Thank you all.

 

Andy Hurley came out to her parents when she was 16 years old. She had a girlfriend, kind of—she had a girl who facilitated vicious rumors about her by day and made out with her frantically, like a starving thing, by night. A straight girl, which is the most star-crossed kind of girl there is.

Andy’s first girl. Andy’s first girl who counted.

She started buying her own clothes with money from her movie theater job. She split her free time between rigorous drum training, driving to Chicago for shows, and kissing Evie Stewart in basements and under porchlights. Sometimes Evie let Andy put her hand in her bra. Andy wasn’t sleeping much. She didn’t need to. It was a high point in her life. She didn’t feel comfortable, exactly, but it was the most comfortable she’d been in sixteen years of life. So she figured it was time.

Andy’s never been one for sugarcoating. They were eating pot roast—Andy had a microwaved Morningstar patty, because her mom was only just tolerating her recent proclamation of vegetarianism—and she just kind of blurted it out.

“I wanted to tell you. I’m a lesbian.”

Her stepdad sprayed beer in a fine mist over everyone else’s dinner. Her mom dropped her silverware with a terrific clatter to her plate.

“The fuck is this now?” her stepdad asked hoarsely.

Her mother placed one hand over her husband’s and the other over her own mouth.

Andy, sixteen years old with balls of brass, put a forkful of burger in her mouth. She chewed, swallowed. Waited.

They all grew old in the time it took her mother to speak. When she finally did, it was to say, “Well don’t make up your mind too quickly, Andrea. You have plenty of time to meet the right man.” She touched Andy’s shoulder and Andy flinched. “I want you to have a good life,” said her mom, eyes filling with Hallmark moment tears.

No one gave a shit about what Andy wanted.

“And I don’t want any gay activities in my home, you hear me?” added her stepdad.

Because the plentiful gifts of heterosexuality were just _so fucking obvious_ in that moment.

Today Andy stands in front of the full-length mirror in her dorm room and tries not to hyperventilate. She’s in her underwear, a white sports bra and white  briefs. She has an electric razor in her hand.

She usually tries to avoid looking at herself like this.

In the mirror: her calloused feet like strange white fish, her unshaven legs, the dark wiry hair that springs from her legs and armpits and cunt, the light little trail up to her belly button. Her pale stomach and its pooch of untoned flesh, something she understands she’s meant to feel bad about. The soft flare of her hips and the heft of her ass, usually squared off by the men’s jeans she prefers. Her breasts, though she skips quickly over those. Her shoulders, broad and strong; her arms thick with the muscles required to drum day after day without tire. Her hair, thick where it falls loose around her face, with a permanent crimp from her ponytail holder, an uninspiring shade of brown.

She does not look at her face.

She does not meet her own eyes.

Andy shivers. It is April, and her room is cold. She grips the razor tighter. She doesn’t know what she is, but she knows what she’s not. She’s not a boy and she doesn’t want to be. What she wants is to kiss girls—kiss them, love them, fuck them, keep them. She knows _who_ she is. She’s a lesbian. She’s a drummer. She’s a Star Wars nerd.

She’s Andy.

She rests her eyes on her tattoo—the scars of ink that make up the first thing about herself she’s ever really chosen. The only deliberate part of her whole self.

Well. This is deliberate too.

She clicks on the razor. In its buzz she hears her mother’s voice, the echoes of their last fight. _“We’ll just have to figure some things out this summer, Andrea. Figure out what’s best for you. It’s obvious your_ image _is getting in the way of your potential. And, you know, since Darrell and I are_ paying _for your education, not to mention your room and board, we do get a say in whether you squander it. I think a makeover is in order… Lord knows I can’t send you back to campus in those baggy clothes you wear now. Senior year is so important for a woman, socially. College is the best place to meet a husband… Oh, I know you think you don’t want one now, but you’ll be surprised. Anyway, a girl ought to wear some color...”_ How is it possible that it got _worse_ when Andy left for college? But it has. College wasn’t far enough. Nowhere on earth is far enough.

Andy presses the razor to her scalp and just—cuts it all away.

The buzz resonates in her teeth, her eardrum. She is clumsy and she is slow. She doesn’t stop until it’s done. Until it’s gone.

Until it’s all gone.

*

It’s the last week of classes and for the first time in years, Pat has real friends to eat lunch with. They go off-campus, Jo linking arms with Pat in the parking lot as they traipse ahead of Garrett and his friends.

“No penises in shotgun,” Jo announces. It’s her van, so she gets to make rules like this. Pat and Jo take the front; Garrett and Will and Jones settle in the  back. “This is what it will be like on tour,” Jo tells Pat knowledgeably. “Five of us in a van, unshowered and hungry and ready to take on the world.”

We Are Weirdos Mister leave for tour in a few short weeks. Pat’s just about convinced her parents to let her go. They have like, at least five fans now. Pat is prepared for touring with her friends in the cicada-buzzing heat of Illinois June to be the peak experience of her short life.

Jo glances in the rearview, eyes the boys jostling each other roughly while they play some game that involves nipple-grabbing and yelling ‘homo’ and ‘fag’ at volume. “Okay, not exactly like this,” Jo says. “We won’t let T.J. and Mike sit next to each other. God, boys suck.”

Pat twists in her seat to watch the homoerotic tumble of sexual slurs unfold. She’s glad Pete isn’t here to see it. Pete, or Andy. Even though Garrett is totally adorable and she likes every single thing about him and she feels like the only girl in the world when he’s looking at her, the skirmish on the bench seat is admittedly kinda gross.

Garrett stands in line with her at Portillo’s, playing with her hoodie strings. It makes her heart skid through her chest like sock feet on linoleum when they go out in public together. Instead of the awkward, repulsive misfit she was before, now she’s a girl that a cool guy chose. It gives her an automatic, built-in place to belong. A girl with a boy never has to explain her place in the world. She never has to justify taking up space, never has to negate the fact that she exists. He puts a hand on her and she’s allowed.

“Dessert problem: should I get chocolate cake or a strawberry-banana smoothie? They’re both my favorite thing on the menu,” Pat debates.

“Both,” Jo advises. “Always get both. For example, I will be ordering mostaccioli, fries, _and_ extra garlic bread.”

“Garlic bread?” repeats Garrett.

“It’s only 95 cents for extra garlic bread. It’s the pro move. I’ll give you that tip for free.” Jo is deadly serious about carbohydrates.

But when Pat gets to the window and places her order, Garrett grimaces. “You’re not really getting both, are you? Do you think you need it?”

The cashier, bored and probably expecting more from life than wearing a paper hat during the lunch rush, looks from Pat to Garrett and back again.

Garrett’s looking down at the band of chub poking out over the waistband of Pat’s low-rise jeans. She tugs her zip hoodie down, but it’s too late. Her face burns, the color of a firetruck. It’s obvious to the whole restaurant she doesn’t _need it._

“Um, just the sandwich and the smoothie, please,” she mumbles to the cashier.

After Pat’s paid, Garrett orders three hot dogs and the largest size of fries on the menu. Pat fists her hands up in her hoodie sleeves and breathes through her teeth, concentrating on feeling nothing at all.

“No cake?” Jo sounds disappointed when she arrives at their table with her laden tray. “I was totally going to steal some.”

“Here, steal some smoothie instead.” Pat is suddenly desperate to get rid of it.

Garrett and his friends shovel food into their mouths like it’s a race, totally fucking oblivious.

“So I’m calling like, bowling alleys, pizza places, cafes, roller rinks, bars, basically every place in the Midwest with a sound system, right?” Jo is saying. She talks with her mouth full, washes stringy cheese down with smoothie, doesn’t give a fuck. Pat loves her in a way that is sharp and gutting. For some reason she wants to cry. She pushes around the limp, greasy tract of Italian beef in front of her. “Only, when they ask for our band name, I don’t know what to say. And they’ve obviously never heard of us since we have a different name at every show! I think it’s time we intervened. Saved Pete from herself.”

“ _I_ wanted to be the Blue Trauberts. You know, like Tom Waits?”

“That,” Jo informs her, popping a French fry in her mouth, “is stupid. We’re a _girl band_. I think we should name ourselves after The Simpsons.”

Pat is so startled she laughs out loud. “Like, the Springfield Isotopes?” she giggles.

“Exactly! We—are—Coming Up Milhouse!”

“Marge’s Sisters.”

“Cowabunga.”

“Eat _Your_ Shorts.”

They’re riffing, trading rapid-fire Simpsons references and laughing, when the guys stop debating the best rack on the cheerleading squad long enough for Will, who has crashed more than one of their practices, to say, “Wait, are you talking about names for your little music group?”

“We’re a regular-size rock band,” Jo says flatly. Pat, who wants Garrett’s friends to like her enough that she will usually participate in Rate The Cheerleader when Jo’s not around, doesn’t say anything.

“I mean, you can call yourselves that if you want,” Garrett says, grinning sideways at Will, “but you’re not, like, an _actual_ band. You barely ever have enough members for all the instruments, and all you do is play covers and argue.” Gleefully, he high-fives Jones.

Jo’s mouth drops open in outrage. “And write songs! And play shows! And kick ass!”

Garrett rolls his eyes at her. He’s always such an ass around Jo, like he thinks he needs to show off. Pat wishes Jo could see the part of him that is cute and sweet and makes her feel like she has a place in the world when they kiss, as if his hands and his hands only imbue her with worth. Pat wishes Jo could see when he says romantic things, like _you look like a painting, like in the Renaissance when the chicks are all round and pudgy. They would have thought you were so beautiful_ or _it’s so cute when you sing_ or _your tits feel awesome_. Okay, maybe not the last one. He’s not a poet or anything, he’s not Pete, but—

Pat shakes her head, hard. That was beyond weird. Why would she compare him to _Pete_?

She’s snapped back to reality when the argument between Garrett and Jo, which is in some ways always unfolding, suddenly intensifies.

“She doesn’t _just sing_ ,” Jo is spitting at top volume. Her food forgotten, she’s on her feet. “She’s a fucking _musician_. She sings better than the three of you dumb fucks put together, and she does it while she’s slaying on the guitar, and she writes all our songs like it’s easy, and she can fucking wail on the drums—”

“Yeah, and I played the saxophone in sixth grade. Jesus, calm down. Are you in lesbian love with his girlfriend or something?” Jones interrupts.

“Seriously, Trohman. Your period must be a fucking massacre this month,” Garrett adds.

Jo, apparently, has arrived at the level of outrage at which she cannot speak. She grips Pat’s arm like she wants to turn it into juice with heavy pulp. “Get in the van, Pat,” she says through her teeth. “These assholes can find their own way back to school.”

Jo holds her arm and Garrett grabs her hand, like they’re gonna use her body for tug-of-war. “Babe. Babe. C’mon,” he says. “Your friend is being a total bitch. We were just talking.”

“You’re gonna let him call me a bitch?” Jo demands. Her volume is probably causing permanent eardrum damage at this range.

“Overreaction much?” Garrett sneers.

Pat slumps low in her seat, wishing she could slide under the table and right out of this confrontation. She slips out of Jo’s grip in her attempt. Feeling like a traitor, she squeezes Garrett’s hand.

In seventeen years no boy has ever liked her, or kissed her, or been kind to her. She doesn’t want to wait another seventeen years for the next one.

“Sit down, Jo?” She means it like an imperative but it comes out an apologetic question. “Garrett didn’t mean it. Let’s just—let’s just eat.”

Muttering “Yeah, like you’re eating,” Jo does finally sit down. But neither Pat nor Jo seem to have much appetite. On the drive back to school, Garrett spills his milkshake all over Jo’s backseat. He snickers while he apologizes, so it doesn’t seem much like an accident. Pat’s late to her next class, helping Jo clean the melting chocolate mess.

*

Sometimes Pete’s okay. Other times she splits open.

It’s like—it’s like so much has soaked into her skin, sometimes she can’t hold it. She’s absorbed so much in her life. Social expectations, cultural roles programmed since birth, the whispers and rumors that whip up around her wherever she goes. Other people’s poison, her own ink. Sex and lust and not love, not ever, or near enough to never there’s no difference. Violence, fists and fury, elbows and boots and wandering hands, fine lines drawn by blades finer. Loathing to and from others and self. Alcohol enough to drown, every kind of drug she’s been offered. Words that are weapons. A hostile atmosphere. A country and a continent of air she’s not allowed to breathe, just one in an entire generation of asphyxiated women. Sometimes it’s like she’s never known a touch that wasn’t violent, not even her own.

Sometimes she feels used up. Exploited—used—taken advantage of—assaulted. Call it what you want.

Sometimes she feels like a hurricane.

She’s in the middle of a final and she’s suddenly just... too much for her skin to hold. Not enough to slow herself back down. Supernova. She hasn’t been sleeping—partly because studying, mostly because Pete—which is a warning sign for her. A red flag indicating she’s begun the transmutation from human girl to natural disaster.  She’s been feeling stronger and stronger, faster and faster, like the only reason anyone lives their life in order is lack of inspiration and she’s about to break free of the bullshit illusion of linear causality, like she’s the Lewis and Clark of hyperspace, like she’s an interdimensional skipping stone. She feels like she can run like this forever, air and spark and steam, speeding up in tandem with emptying out. The only limiting factor is her own stubborn slowness in forking over her molecules, her hesitation about pouring out her foundation. Scorch the earth, Pete, and set yourself free.

She’s in the middle of a final exam, endless limitless too fast for mortal eyes to see, and then it all just collapses, folding in on itself like she’s been a black hole this whole time and she’s consumed every bit of matter but herself. (Her selfhood has a bitter taste, is not nourishing, gets spat back out. By her, by the universe, by everyone who tries it.)

Pete leaves her exam booklet and Blue Book, full of racing thoughts and scribbles and nothing resembling answers to the exam questions, on her desk. She has to get out. She feels like she’s going to burst her skin, like she’s made of sinew and shimmer and she’s coming apart. She can’t remember why she ever thought anything was important, why she studied for this exam or took this class in the first place. Why is she here, in college, in this building, on this earth? Why is she anywhere at all? By the time she’s out on the streets of Chicago, under the oppressive weight of the snow-globe sky, she’s sobbing.

The sun is too bright. Her skin doesn’t fit. The sky is suffocating. It’s choking her, all of everything is bearing down on her throat. She cannot breathe. She cannot be. She doesn’t know what to do or where to go, but she is afraid to be alone. She gets in her car—in this moment is seems absurd that a piece of paper ought to determine who can operate a vehicle and whose privileges are suspended—and drives to Jo’s house in the suburbs. It seems unfair that it’s easier to breathe out there. She always fucking hated Wilmette. Pete can feel the cracks. She’s made of fragments.

How does a person prepare to shatter? How does a girl brace for her own impact?

Pete, wrecked and ragged, knocks on Jo’s front door.

Jo’s mom answers.

Dr. Trohman looks like she always does, which is highly suspicious of Pete. “Jo’s at school,” she tells Pete, information that should have been obvious to anyone with a working sense of time. One of Dr. Trohman’s eyebrows is permanently arched into skepticism when she looks at Pete.

Today, like Dana Scully, they both doubt that Pete exists.

Pete doesn’t so much begin crying as pick up where she left off. “I don’t—know how—to be alone right now,” she chokes and snorts around great, hiccuping waves of tears.

Motherhood takes over. “Oh, sweetheart,” Dr. Trohman says, suddenly soft. She pulls Pete into the house, her face made over with concern. Pete clings to her pathetically, pressing her face into Dr. Trohman’s shoulder and breathing in her clean, vaguely antiseptic smell.

Jo’s mom gets Pete settled on the loveseat in their living room. She sits beside her, rubbing her back while she cries. The small circles of Dr. Trohman’s hand hold Pete down, keep her linked to the earth. They anchor her against the unbearable whirl of the planet whipping through space at unlivable speeds.

“You’re a good mom,” Pete says into the throw pillow she’s snotting all over. Her crying has slowed down enough that she can take normal-sized breaths again. She feels marginally less like she’s immolating. “Jo is—Jo is one of the best people I know.”

Thinking about her friends and how much she loves them makes Pete’s heart hitch up again in her chest, like she’ll break into a trillion pieces and never deserve a moment of this life.

“Easy, Pete,” Dr. Trohman soothes. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

“I am,” Pete chokes out. The ugly confession brings more tears with it.

Dr. Trohman’s hand stops smoothing circles and starts prodding for tenderness or injury. It is the most discreet medical evaluation Pete’s ever had. She wants to tell Dr. Trohman she won’t find anything, that none of Pete’s damage is on the outside. None of it is in a place eyes can see or hands can feel. It all scabbed over so long ago. Turned to gangrene and wormholes deep inside her. God, Pete _wishes_ she could just tell someone what was wrong. She wishes there were words for it. She wishes there were _reasons_.

“I’m just like this,” Pete whispers to the pillow. “I’m just—broken.”

“Did something happen to you?” Dr. Trohman is crouching in front of the loveseat now, her eyes level with Pete’s. She looks serious, like if Pete says _yes_ Dr. Trohman will be on the phone with the police in an instant. But it’s years and years too late for that. “Pete, I want to help you. But I need you to tell me how I can do that.”

Pete takes a breath, tries to gather whatever she can of herself. “I wanted to see Jo,” she says, keeping her voice from shaking as much as she’s able. “Do you think maybe I could wait for her here?”

“Of course,” Dr. Trohman says. She’s still frowning. Pete doesn’t know how to turn off that troubled look. “Is there any medication you’re supposed to be taking?”

Oh, god. She’s a doctor. Dr. Trohman is a _doctor_. Of course she’s going to ask that. Pete’s stomach, made of worms, writhes blackly inside her. Will Dr. Trohman let Jo go on tour with a fucking basketcase? Why would any mother let her daughter be alone with the despicable puddle of shellshock and burnt-up nerves that’s called Pete Wentz? Pete bites her tongue, glad she didn’t say out loud the name of her disease. Of course there’s medication. Of course Pete isn’t taking it.

The rule is, you don’t fucking talk to doctors. Not even when they’re women. Not even when you’re so weakfuckedupbroken you forget, for a minute or an hour or a drive to Wilmette, that you don’t deserve to be taken care of.

“I just remembered that I need to go,” Pete says. She tries to stand too quickly. Her vision whites out, her blood not knowing where the fuck it’s meant to be in her body. She wobbles.

Dr. Trohman puts her hands on Pete’s shoulders, guides her back down onto the couch. “Nuh-uh,” she says, not sounding very doctorly. “Your pulse is weak, your skin is clammy, you’re way too pale. You’re having some chamomile tea and a vitamin, and I’m making you soup. If that doesn’t bring your color back up, I want you to consider seriously coming with me to the hospital for a saline drip. Your skin turgor suggests you’re very dehydrated.”

Pete opens her mouth to protest and Dr. Trohman covers it. Pete is so startled by the informality of the gesture that she falls silent. “I want to keep you under observation at the very least. You can borrow PJs from Jo. You’ll stay the night. I get the feeling you haven’t been doing much sleeping,” Dr. Trohman says kindly. Pete realizes then what she’s doing: she’s giving Pete an excuse, a medical excuse, for the way she’s acting. For the mess she is and the things she’s not willing to say out loud, not to Jo’s mom, not to anyone. Dr. Trohman’s giving her an excuse to stay.

Pete goes limp with relief. “Okay, Dr. Troh,” she says meekly. “Whatever you think is best.” Her eyes blur with tears again. This time, it’s because she’s grateful.

*

Two pizzas and four episodes of The Real World later, Jo is hanging upside off the couch and her hair is finally out of her eyes for the first time in years. (It doesn’t even seem to get longer anymore, just _larger_.) She hits Pete in the knee to get her attention and says, “So seriously. Are you okay?”

Pete, in fuzzy pink terrycloth pants that belong to Jo’s mom, plucks at her hoodie sleeves and looks uncomfortable. “I am not always okay,” she says. Her voice is so small, without its usual boisterous energy. “I don’t always— _cope_ very well. With the demands of life. With my… history.” Pete stops, her cheeks flushing like she has a fever, and hides her face in the crook of her arm.

Jo sits up—headrush—and faces Pete on the couch. She pets Pete’s hair in what she hopes is a comforting way.

After a while, muffled by her own arm, Pete starts to speak. “When I was fifteen. I was really fucked up. I’m sure it was scary. I’m sure it was—a lot. I wanted to die all the time, and I’d do anything to myself, or with anyone else, to feel differently. Things had already happened to show me my body wasn’t worth much… wasn’t special. There is no sanctuary inside of me, just quicksand. Just the dark.

“My family didn’t know how to deal with that. They saw me as dangerous, and I guess I was. So they put me in a hospital. They didn’t know what else to do, I guess. For eight months I lived there. I went to school there. I learned to survive. The toughest, the meanest, the most incandescent… the one who ate the least food and carved the most cuts and got the most orderlies to flirt back. Like, that’s how you become queen of a pack of suicidal teenage girls. My roommate, she got in by trying to hang herself in the back of a _cop car_. It was an intense peer group…”

Jo is hardly daring to exhale by this point. She’s never heard any of this before. She’s worried that if she makes any sound at all, Pete will get spooked and pull back into herself. She’ll become the bright lights and sparkle of Paris, and no one will think to ask about the catacombs under the city where she really lives.

“They diagnosed me there. Bipolar. I have meds for it, but when I take them… Everything tastes like metal. The world is slow and doesn’t shine. I can barely think, let alone write. I hate them. I’d rather feel like this, sometimes, and quick with mischief and magic like Peter Pan the rest of it.”

Pete looks up, her eyes puffy from a day of tears, semi-permanent mascara tracks down her splotchy cheeks. She wipes her nose unprettily on her sleeve.

Jo loves her so, so much.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you about the risks of being around me,” she says.

Jo laughs quietly, not because it’s funny but because it’s the saddest thing she’s ever heard. She grabs Pete abruptly and hugs her tight. “People don’t come with warning labels,” she tells Pete. “That’s not a thing. I don’t care if you have bad days. I’m glad you came here. I’m glad you’re my friend.”

And that seems like enough for Pete. They curl up together and watch MTV til well past Jo’s bedtime. Her mom never comes down to turn off the TV. Jo pets Pete’s hair until they’re both asleep.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the girls go on summer tour, everyone goes swimming and Pat _notices nothing_ , and Jo embarks on a crusade.

 

“Oh my god, your _hair_ !” Jo shrieks as Andy emerges from her car. “You look _glorious_ ! You look like men would cross the street to _avoid_ you! Oh my god, you stone bad-ass!”

Jo runs across her lawn until she’s in range, then launches herself at Andy. Andy staggers back, catching her friend, and they cling to each other laughing. Jo squeezes her too tight to breathe, scrubs at the short bristly stubble on the back of her head, and says into her shoulder, “I missed you _so much_.”

Today they leave on summer tour.

Jo generally gets in the way while Andy transfers her drum kit, piece by piece, into the back of the van. At one point Jo is carrying literally one cymbal, as if that counts as being helpful. She chatters excitedly about the first shows they have lined up, her ideas about how to save money on food and where to sleep. They’re going east first, to Indianapolis and Ohio, down to Louisville, then west through southern Illinois and St. Louis, then swinging up through Iowa and to the Twin Cities. They’ll come home through Wisconsin, finish things out on Chicago soil. They have three and a half weeks. Jo, somehow, has booked them 19 shows.

“How do you have a full tour arranged when you don’t even have a _name_?” Andy mutters. Really, she’s teasing just to cover for how unbelievably grateful she is to be there. Andy’s parents like Pete—they like her jelly bracelets and short skirts and the way she attracts boys like assholes to honey—and it was a surprisingly easy sell, coming out to help her friend Pete instead of coming home. July looms on the horizon, but Andy’s made the executive decision not to look at the horizon just now. Not when the moment around her is so good.

Finally, after an eternity of watching Pat and some tall dude in ripped jeans try _one last time_ to suck each other’s faces off, they get on the road. Pat, Pete, and T.J., the guitarist Andy doesn’t really know, take the bench seat. Any gets shotgun next to Jo. The road opens up before them. The air feels giddy, like the world is theirs for the taking.

The hours pass quickly, excitement-soaked and full of laughter. They talk about anything, everything; they pass around a giant bag of Sour Patch kids until they all have stomachaches; Pete tries to get everyone to play car games with her, mostly by punching them and shouting “SLUGBUG!” at max volume; Pat produces a string of obscure cassette tapes to feed the van’s ancient stereo, and as a group they vote to flip the Toto tape over and play it through again. It feels so _easy,_ that’s what surprises Andy the most. She’s able to just—be.

*

By most metrics, it's a bad show. They open at a punk house off the Indiana State campus two weeks after school gets out, an event that annually converts a lively college town back into shitty, rural Terre Haute. The house is pretty empty before their set; once they start playing, it gets emptier. Usually Pat's knees would get weaker, her skin hotter, her stomach knottier with each grimacing punk that leaves the room. Today it's different.

Today it's _working_.

For one thing, before Pete can announce the latest in an endless string of stupid temporary band names, Jo grabs the Pat’s mic and shouts, “We are the ex-girlfriends of Chicago hardcore, and you can call us _FALL OUT BOY!_ ”

No one cheers—there’s, like, two polite claps from the audience—but Pat’s heart does a happy flip. Pete’s face is stunned. She’s probably never been usurped before. All Pat can do is laugh. Of all the Simpsons references they’ve bandied back and forth, Fall Out Boy was by far her favorite one. She never thought Jo would actually do it. But then, the damn name of their band changes so often, why not throw in a joke or two? They might as well bill their next show as Boner Party.

“Watch out!” Pat calls out. It’s Fall Out Boy’s catchphrase, and the first time she’s ever spoken directly to a crowd. Jo is the only one who laughs. It’s just about to get really awkward up there—Pete usually starts the first song with a heavy reverberating bassline, and she’s too busy scowling, so the silence is just _stretching_ —when the sound of drumsticks clicking together rescues them. Andy counts them off. She clicks her sticks, four-three-two- _now_ , and the set comes together like magic.

And it is a kind of magic.

Andy is the backbone that they need, the continuity that stitches together the disparate parts of their shifting roster, the surety to fill in the gaps in their confidence and rapport. And while most of the crowd isn’t into it, the ones who don’t outright leave the room, they get closer. They bounce on their heels, bob their heads to the beat. Some of them dance. Some of them learn the choruses, start to sing them back.

T.J. keeps coming in late, Pete is somehow sulking through her instrument, Pat can’t remember half the words Pete insists she shoehorn into unwilling music, and none of them can quite agree on the tempo. But Pat finds that it doesn’t matter. Jo leans in to belt the chorus into Pat’s mic with her; Pete presses her forehead against Pat’s shoulder and plays the bass right up against her. They feel like a band. Pat feels like herself.

She likes it.

Pat never thought the stage would be a place where she belonged. (The stage, or anywhere.) She’s up there, singing, having a good time with her friends, and all she’s thinking is how special it is. How fucking amazing. A year ago she didn’t have a place to sit at lunch. She didn’t have anyone to distract her from chemistry homework. She didn’t have a crew when she went to shows, a wall of sharp-elbowed girls with sharper scowls who dance hard and take no shit, a wall that she and Jo and Andy form whenever they’re all at the same gig. She didn’t know that girls were like a Voltron: each girl who protects another girl makes them all stronger, more fantastic.

But now she knows all that. Now she’s been swept up in some kind of traveling friendship circus, doing things she never thought would be possible for her.

So, yeah. Magic.

 

After, they pack up their equipment so the next band can set up. They’re crashing at this dirty, unwelcoming house tonight, so there’s really nowhere for them to go. They wander around to the backyard, cool off from the exertions of performing in the Indiana dusk. There are punk kids milling around, passing bottles, probably the same kids they drove away with their sour-candy songs. Pete spreads her leather jacket on the grass grandly and seats Pat and Jo on it. She disappears for a few minutes and come back laden down with alcohol. They sit on the lawn, sipping or not, and ride out the giddy energy of the show together.

With singular determination, Pete begins emptying the fifth of cheap whiskey she’s produced from somewhere. It’s never very hard for Pete to find alcohol. Men just— _give_ her things. Pat feels complicated about it.

Jo helps Pete work on the bottle, all grimace and watering eyes. “My mother would be furious with you if she knew about this,” she grins over the lip of the bottle. “You and Andy swore to be the vanguards of my adolescent sobriety, remember?”

“That was _years_ ago,” Pete says, at the same time Andy gasps in exaggerated horror, “Heavens, no! My untarnished reputation with your mother! Bottle down, Jo Troh. No more booze for you on my watch.” A brief squabble erupts as Andy tries to wrest the bottle from Jo. Laughter and rolling on the grass ensues. Whiskey splashes down around them like raindrops.

The next band starts playing. T.J. wanders off after a while. It’s pretty obvious he feels out of place, being the only guy. Pat likes him well enough but can’t help feeling a sense of justice anyway, like: it’s about time a dude has to experience what she’s felt at every show and guitar shop and record store forever.

Pete notices Pat keeps just passing the bottle, sober as straight-edge Andy, and shoots Pat a disapproving side-eye. She disappears for a while and comes back with her long fingers crooked around the necks of three wine coolers. She sits close to Pat and presses one of the bottles into her hands. The whole night feels close and portentous, like the whole universe is an intimate backdrop for the four of them and their adventure. Like this whole party is a celebration of them.

“Why are you trying to get me drunk?” Pat asks suspiciously.

“M’not,” Pete insists, her voice extra warm and a little clumsy. There’s not much whiskey left in that bottle. “Sweet and fruity, like a Pat. You’ll like it. I like you.”

It’s hard to argue with the sheer force of her happiness, of the potential and rightness of this, the first night of their first tour. Pat takes the wine cooler. She twists the top off. She drinks.

As it grows darker, fireflies start to signal and pulse in the night around them. Pat starts to feel like they’re in an enchanted garden, not the shitty backyard of a punk house. The tall, untended grass, the murmur of music thumping up from the basement like it’s being played deep in the earth, the susurrus of voices in the yard around them, the blurry glow of alcohol, the rhythmic Midwest hum of cicadas, the cool slick of Pete’s leather jacket beneath her—and now the fireflies like low-hanging stars.

“Can I braid your hair?” Andy asks from over Pat’s shoulder. It’s such an uncharacteristically feminine request. It makes Pat feel like she’s at a slumber party. Maybe they’ll all sleep out here like this, under the stars.

“Um. Do I have to take my hat off for that?” Pat asks. Everyone starts laughing, even her.

The wine cooler makes Pat feel sweet and sticky, full of sap. She can feel her heartbeat in her cheeks. She opens the second one. Andy’s fingers in her hair make her feel safe. Boys drift by to talk to them, drawn by the siren-song of Jo’s long leathered legs and Pete’s hiked-up plaid skirt and the saccharine irresistibility of their happiness. Pete is rude, Jo is businesslike.

“My associate isn’t accepting any gentleman callers at this time,” Jo tells them briskly when they approach Pete.

“We’re ALL LESBIANS!” Pete shouts, often before the dude even makes it over to their makeshift blanket.

Jo lays down, puts her head in Pat’s lap, and tells them all about the international acclaim, glory, and fame Fall Out Boy is sure to achieve.

“That’s not the name of the band, though,” says Pete.

“And I’m not in it,” says Andy.

Jo just cackles menacingly, like she knows something the rest of them don’t.

The adrenaline charge of the show has bled out, slowly replaced by the sleepy slowness of wine coolers and friendship, by the time the third band starts to play.

“We should go in,” Jo says at last. “Talk up our band. Network. Generate buzz for our show in Indianapolis tomorrow. Be nice to T.J.”

“We should break into that frat house’s pool over there is what we should do,” Pete says.

This is the worst idea Pat’s ever heard, so naturally in no time at all her friends are on one side of a tall, spiked iron gate and she’s stuck on the other, staring woefully at the padlock that is refusing to spring open of its own volition.

“I don’t climb fences,” she says. It is the eighth time she’s told them this. “I can’t.” She doesn’t want to say the obvious—they can all plainly see she is what her mother tactfully describes as _not athletic_ —and the last thing Pat wants is to be the chubby girl speared like a sausage on a fence spike when the cops show up to arrest them for breaking and entering.

But these bitches refuse to swim without her.

“The pool is _right here_ ,” Jo pleads. “We made it through the bushes and over that security wall and past the motion-activated floodlight. We are Tom Cruise dangling from the ceiling, Pat, that’s how close we are. Hop the fence and it’s home free.”

“Do you want me to come back over and boost you?” Andy offers, like it would possibly be less horrible than Pat struggling and grunting to heft herself over to have _Andy_ do it.

“I’m just gonna go back to the house and hang with T.J.,” Pat says. It is also the eighth time she has said this. Two wine coolers is definitely not enough to make this seem like a good idea.

Then Pete’s skinny arm shoots through the bars. Her hand clamps onto Pat’s wrist. Pat feels it down to the bone. It pushes the breath out of her lungs. Her heart feels dizzy and thick.

Being touched by Pete is not like being touched by anyone else.

“Patty,” Pete says, voice sweet and soft, eyes aching brown and bright with whiskey. “Climb the fucking fence.”

And somehow, Pat does.

Without dignity or grace, her friends cheering her the whole way, she struggles up and topples over the fence. She rips a hole in her t-shirt, an essential piece of her very limited tour wardrobe, and lands on her hands and knees. She skins her palms on the concrete.

But goddamnit, she gets over.

Pete helps her up, her face made over with that wicked grin. This next part hadn’t occurred to Pat: now that she’s over the fence, how is she possibly going to get out of swimming? But Pete’s deathgrip is back on her, blotting out all thought, and this time Pete says, “Time to strip, girls. Into the pool!”

 

Pete moves through the water like a dolphin, her skin flickering bright in the underwater pool lights. Her tattoos glow like neon lights against her bones. Her underwear—

Pat concentrates on not noticing Pete’s underwear. She doesn’t notice that it’s white or that it’s cotton or that it clings. She doesn’t notice that, wet, the thin white bra does little more than highlight the darkness of Pete’s nipples. Pat notices absolutely _nothing at all_ about Pete’s pubic area.

They abandon all attempts to be stealthy. Jo does a running, whooping cannonball into the pool, splashing everyone and mercifully blinding Pat. Maybe the chlorine will cause permanent damage, Pat hopes. Maybe her view of the world will be pixeled out forever and she will never have to worry about what she does and does not notice again. Just in case her vision does return, she takes off her glasses. She wriggles out of her jeans. Then she just sort of—stands at the edge of the pool, pulling her t-shirt down as far as it will go over her thighs and ass.

Because here’s the thing.

Pat’s friends are all _thin_.

Andy splashes Pat’s feet, swimming up to the edge of the pool. Jo’s slim and slippery in black boy shorts and a livid purple push-up bra, Andy’s solidly built but lithe in a chest-compressing sports bra and briefs. Pete is—Pat’s not looking at Pete.

Pat in her underwear isn’t sexy or carefree or cute. Pat in her underwear is like a raw turkey with the skin still on, all trussed up in too-tight string.

She stands there paralyzed, feet frozen in place at the side of the pool.

“The water’s nice,” Andy volunteers, swimming over and looking up at her. All Pat can think about is what her thighs look like from this angle. She tugs her shirt down harder. If they see her soft, folded tummy, she knows beyond all doubt that she will die.

Andy pulls herself out of the water, the muscles in her shoulders and arms bunching and flowing as she moves. She plops ungracefully on the pool’s edge, her head’s close stubble glittering with water droplets. She is utterly mindless of the slight bulge of her hips over the waistband of her briefs, or the way her thighs spread on the concrete. Pat takes heart.

“You know,” Andy says wryly, “I’m not always the most comfortable in my body.” She watches her own feet swirl in the water. In the background, Jo and Pete are re-enacting Water World. It involves much shrieking and splashing. “Usually, uh, _I_ don’t even look at me in my underwear. But—I figured that tonight I’d rather be with my friends than care about that shit.” She glances sideways at Pat. Her mouth shapes a tiny smile.

“Can I tell you a secret about girls?” she mock-whispers. Pat nods. “They think all other girls look fucking _marvelous_. Dyke’s honor.”

Pat lets go of the bottom of the t-shirt. She lets it fly up above her belly as she jumps into the pool.

*

Spending hundreds of hours locked in an 8-seat van with Patricia Stump probably counts as an active suicide attempt. It makes Pete’s skin itch, like Pat is a rash. They spend each day driving or dicking around whatever town they’re in, trying to entertain themselves without any money. They spend each night playing shows or splitting stale PopTarts for dinner if their show gets cancelled. Most venues are paying them in pizza and beer. It is unclear how they’re going to keep filling the van’s gas tank if this keeps up. They sleep in the van, on the floors of strangers’ apartments, at the mercy of acquaintances and internet contacts. No matter how far apart they are when Pete closes her eyes, they wake up tangled together.

There is literally no respite. Short of throwing herself out of the moving van, Pete can’t escape.

They bicker. They get crabby and snappish. They enjoy long silences. They tell stories and construct elaborate jokes. They belt it to Pat’s tapes. They fight about new songs. Mostly, though, they talk. They talk about everything and nothing, themselves and the future, the band and their shows. They talk about boys. Pete is by far the most knowledgeable on the subject, though Jo has let a significant proportion of guys in the scene buy things for her over the years.

T.J., riding shotgun, makes a sound of exasperation. “You just let them buy shit for you, thinking you want to date them?”

Jo, in the backseat for once, is painting her fingernails white. She doesn’t look up from her task as she says, “I never say I want to date them.”

“What are the ethics on that? Can we get a ruling from the Skank Parliament?” Pat jokes, turning to Pete. Pete does not love this new title, but she cracks a straw man’s grin anyway. What else can she do? Short of throwing herself out of the moving van. There just aren’t a lot of options.

Jo paints her middle finger in three clean strokes, the picture of unconcern.  “I mean, how else am I gonna afford concert tickets and CDs? I spend my entire paycheck on this van and this band. If boys want to buy me gifts or bring me smoothies at work, I’m not going to stop them.”

“I want smoothies at work,” Andy, the driver, says to herself.

“I think that’s real fucking shitty, Jo,” T.J. says from the front. His voice is inflected with hurt. “ _I’ve_ brought you a smoothie at work.”

“Yeah? Well, if I started charging you for every time you _accidentally_ touched my ass, I bet I’d have more than a fucking smoothie,” Jo retorts.

The silence in the van settles stony and strained. Pat’s thigh is touching Pete’s. The contact burns. The inside of Pete’s head is scratchy and overheated. Pete has smashed herself as tightly against Jo as she possibly can, but Pat, oblivious, just keeps oozing to fill the space. The way Pete’s been feeling lately—the memory of brushing up against Pat’s bare skin in the pool, more of her body than Pete has ever seen—the way Pat looks whens she sleeps, snoring open-mouthed and idiotic, and the way Pete’s been watching her restless moonlit skin all night and focusing on keeping her arms clamped at her sides instead of doing her own sleeping—the way she’s started to move on stage, night by night gaining more confidence, her hips hitching as she begins to dance—all the times Pete has watched Garrett with his tongue down Pat’s throat and wanted to kill him—all the boys Pete has found to kiss on this tour, like they can scour her tongue and teeth of their illicit fantasies—all the boys who have made her feel _nothing_ —

“It’s not like you’ve got such a great ass,” T.J. mutters defensively after far too long a pause.

Pete scoots even closer to Jo, seeking refuge from the Patspread. Jo scowls at her like _she’s_ the one making vaguely sexist remarks. Pete’s been feeling. She’s been feeling weird lately, okay?

Jo screws the top onto her nail polish with precise, aggressive twists. She leans forward, sticking her head between the two front seats. This send Pete cascading back into Pat Space. For a jostling moment, they overlap like a Venn diagram: shoulder to breast, side to stomach, hip to thigh. Pete scrabbles back into her own space desperately. She is _on fire_.

“Fucking excuse me?” Jo is saying. Their last two shows were both cancelled. They’re hungry, they haven’t showered in a few days, and Jo’s debit card was rejected at the last gas pump. Tempers are running high. “Who the fuck gave you permission to editorialize about _my body_?”

“You’re the one flaunting—” T.J. starts. He doesn’t get the chance to finish, because Andy slams on the brakes so hard that he has to brace himself against the dash to stop from faceplanting into it. Pete, way too tweaked to tolerate the idea of strapping herself in next to Pat, has no seatbelt on. She flies off the bench seat, smacks her head on the center console. Jo grabs the sides of the driver’s seat to keep her balance, ruining a few of her wet nails in the process.

“Ground rules,” Andy grates out in a voice like the pissed-off mother of Death. Her large, strong hands whiteknuckle the steering wheel even though the van is no longer moving. “You can say whatever the fuck you like to each other once this is done, but for as long as we’re living in 150 cubic feet of shared space? This band is your family and your home and your god, and it wouldn’t exist without Jo. So watch your fucking tone when you speak to her.” Jo sticks her tongue out at T.J. behind Andy’s headrest, but she sees it in the rearview mirror. “You too, Trohman,” Andy snaps.

Meanwhile, Pat hauls Pete back up onto the bench seat with gentle hands. It feels so fucking nice to have someone else pick her up for once. “Are you okay?” Pat asks her, smoothing Pete’s bangs off her forehead to investigate for injuries. Pete feels feverish under Pat’s careful touch. She dodges away from Pat’s hand.

“I’m fine,” she mutters, pulling away too roughly. Pat recoils as if stung. As if it’ll make things any better, Pete goes on, “Just—you mind giving me some space? You’re taking up way more than a third of this seat.”

The hurt is plain on Pat’s face. Not breaking eye contact with Pete, she calls out, “Hey, Andy, let me drive a while. You can sit back here and make sure everyone keeps their hands to themselves and stays on their side.”

“Fine with me,” Andy agrees crabbily.

Pete should feel guilty, and maybe she does. But mostly she just feels relieved as Pat unbuckles and slides out of the seat, taking her confusing warmth and softness with her. When Andy takes Pat’s place, she is cool and solid as a brick wall. Pete’s asleep on her shoulder, her muscles unclenching at last, before ten minutes pass.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the band takes an unexpected detour, Jo has a bad day, Pat's afraid of the dark, and the girls discuss virginity. Bonus appearance of my fave cryptid, the Blistex Bisexual!

 

They get to Cincinnati and their show is cancelled. This has happened so many times, by now, that it’s hard to even be surprised.

“I just wish they’d told me _before_ we got here,” Jo says forlornly. She’s still standing at the padlocked venue door with her giant, heavy amp in her arms. “I have a cell phone.” But instead of a phone call or even a text, what they’ve found is a hand-Sharpied sign taped to the door. It reads:

**SHOW CANCELED, BANDS GO HOME**

There’s not a phone number; there’s no one to contact. Jo booked this gig through a friend’s older brother’s buddy who used to bartend here. They aren’t getting their fair third of the cover charge because there’s not going to be any cover. Jo’s arms ache with the weight of her amp but still, she just stands there.

They have $28 between the five of them. They underestimated how hungry they were  going to be, how much food was going to cost. They don’t have anywhere to sleep tonight. They have the gas to get to their next gig in Louisville, at least, but that’s two days from now.  If they have to listen to Roxanne even one more time, Jo will kill herself.

“I don’t know what the fuck we’re going to do.” Jo’s voice is faint. Her arms shake with effort. She hugs the amp tighter to her chest and tucks her chin against it, hugging the lifeless metal for comfort.

Pete, holding an armful of cords and with her bass slung over her back, touches Jo’s elbow lightly. Her voice is reassuring when she says, “I do.” Jo knows better than to be reassured by Pete Wentz, really she does: but she goes ahead and floods with relief anyway.

“Thank god someone has a plan,” she laughs. Her voice is weak with gratitude.

 

“We are not going to fucking Hillsboro and that’s final,” Jo snarls ten minutes later. She shoves equipment back into the van with more force than is strictly necessary. Pete is fuming inside the van, her arms crossed and her pink-laced Vans kicked into the air. She lays across the whole bench and refuses to help the others load.

“No one else has any fucking ideas!” Pete yells in the general direction of the rest of the band. “It’s the _world’s largest horseshoe crab_. How do you guys not want to see this?”

Pat and Andy share a _look_ , like they’re glad someone is intervening with Pete’s terrible fucking ideas but they’re glad it’s not them. Personally Jo would like to tap somebody else in on this one. She’s pretty exhausted—sleeping in a van is not as restful as you might think, and she’s fucking _starving_ , and she’s stressed as hell that this tour she busted her ass arranging is falling apart around them—and she does not have the emotional wherewithal to deal with any more bullshit today.

It’s a futile hope, but Jo casts a pleading look at T.J., just in case. He’s barely speaking to any of them at this point. He scratches his nose with his middle finger and saunters away from the van. Oh, very mature.

“I think you mean world’s largest one hour drive in the wrong direction!” Jo’s not very clever when she’s stressed. She is definitely stressed. She slams the back doors of the van with unnecessary gusto. A few sad flakes of rusty paint detach from the mothership and float to the gasoline-stained pavement.

Jo stalks around to stand in front of the open side door. She crosses her arms and scowls at the upwards-facing treads of Pete’s shoes. “Unless you’re planning to start selling blood for gas money? No dumbass crab for you.”

“Can’t. Got a tattoo too recently. It’s a prejudicial law,” Pete says, as if this is helpful.

“Can we get out of here, at least?” Pat’s voice is plaintive. She’s hugging herself tightly, as if against the cold, even though it’s got to be 90 fucking degrees. Okay, the back of this venue _is_ creepy, even in broad daylight. The sights include broken glass, an overflowing dumpster, graffiti-tagged walls, and—yes—T.J. pissing against the wall.

That’s it. Jo has fucking had enough. “And where exactly are we going to go?” she demands, whirling on Pat. Her voice comes out loud. Louder. Okay, it’s a yell.

Suddenly Jo’s eyes are stinging with tears. Pat looks startled by her volume and wounded by her tone and just totally fucking confused by what’s happening now. “It’s just—it’s a lot of work managing a tour.” Jo’s voice breaks on the words. Her face crumples. She’s definitely crying now.

Andy heaves a very dramatic sigh and walks over to pull Jo into her chest. It is the most half-hearted comfort Jo has ever received. Andy pats her back in a cursory way, like: _ah, fuck, put the kid back together so we can function as a group again_. “No one’s expecting you to have a solution for everything. Just—just shhhhh. Hush. Stop. Let us help come up with a plan,” Andy ‘soothes.’

“I’ve got some, like, third cousins outside of Louisville,” Pete says suddenly. It’s the first helpful thing to come out of her mouth in at least 24 hours. “I bet we can crash with them.” As quickly as her sulk swept in, it sweeps out again. Pete bounces out of the van with gusto. “Give me the keys, JoJo. It’s got to be my turn to drive.”

“Is it even _legal_ for you to drive?” Pat asks. Jo lets out a strangled sort of sob at the thought of being responsible for operating a vehicle right now. God, she needs some _sleep_. And food. A girl cannot live on 89 cent burritos alone.

“Pete’s driving,” Andy declares, her voice rising in alarm as Jo starts producing more liquid.

Pete darts in and snags the keys from Jo’s pocket before anyone can take it back. She jingles the keys, as if anything about this moment is whimsical or merry, and sing-songs, “Put your dick away, T.J. ROAD TRIP!”

 

Honestly. Honestly? Jo doesn’t know why _the fuck_ she’s surprised.

She’s an intelligent young woman. She likes to think she is, anyway. And Pete—Pete is as subtle as a Looney Tunes episode. But god. Jo thought—she _really thought_ —that she was catching a break for once. That someone was helping her out with the terrible job of keeping this band of angry cats together. For once.

Of course it wasn’t that.

Of course Pete drove them 70 miles in the wrong direction so they could see a giant fucking horseshoe crab.

What else would she do? She’s _Pete_.

“I don’t know how you can possibly be mad right now. I think you need to look at the crab again,” Pete’s saying.

“You literally hijacked my van,” Jo bites out. It is taking all of her willpower not to scream. “I’m pretty sure it makes sense that I’m mad.”

“But Jo,” Pete says reasonably. “It’s—this is a really spectacular crab.”

The others are wandering around the orange monstrosity, taking in the ponderous sight. It’s impressive, Jo guesses, if huge metal horseshoe crabs that have been phased out of Maryland aquariums are your passion. If you’re literally anyone else, though? It’s one of the dumber roadside attractions she’s seen in her life. And her parents once stopped at the Mid-America Windmill Museum. She figures the big crab sculpture rates somewhere just below America’s Largest Landfill, just above the World’s Largest Pistachio.

“It’s not even that big,” Jo grumbles to her knees. She’s curled up on the floor of the van with her back to the crab-facing window. She’s so pissed she doesn’t even want to see it.

Pete, kneeling next to her, hooks her chin on Jo’s shoulder. “You can go under the shell,” she says, attempting tantalization. When Jo doesn’t bite, she starts to rock them both back and forth gently. “There’s a giiiiiift shop,” she tries next.

“That’s literally a Creationist church,” Jo complains.

“But they sell plush craaaaabs. And I’ll get you one.”

Jo lifts her head at that. “With what money?” she asks suspiciously. The gas situation is, after all, now a round trip of 140 miles more dire.

In her peripheral, Pete’s doing that full-fang Big Bad Wolf grin. “Oh, I’m not going to _pay_ for it, Josephine. I’m a public figure. I can’t fund religious extremists. I’ll have to steal it.”

In spite of herself, Jo can feel she’s smiling back.

They climb out of the van together. Pete only has to drag her a little.

*

Pat never really noticed how much work Jo was doing to keep everything flowing smoothly between them all until she stopped.

It’s T.J. specifically. Ever since he made that comment about her leading dudes on, it’s been like, open war between them. T.J. has a snarky comeback to everything out of Jo’s mouth when they’re rehearsing, and best case scenario is the two don’t speak at all the rest of the time.

Like, for example, earlier today Jo’s iPod died and T.J. said, “I’d offer you my charger but I wouldn’t want you to think I was _propositioning_ you,” and Jo said, “Don’t fucking worry, you’d have to buy me a whole record store before I’d flirt with you,” and T.J. said back, “Oh yeah, because being a slut is noble when you do it in exchange for material goods, I keep forgetting how principled you are,” and then there was shouting. Like, a lot of shouting. The van is not big enough to contain that kind of tension. All the captive animosity is making Pat break out.

It’s worse when they don’t have a show, because then there’s more time to argue, and this curse-like string of cancellations has everyone on edge. But it’s bad when they have a show too, because there’s this new postmortem critique-fest that’s been happening in the aftermath. T.J. has started offering notes on Jo’s playing in this, like, obnoxiously magnanimous way, like he’s _so_ generous to try and help those less gifted than he. Jo’s started comparing everything T.J. does to Pat’s guitar work. It puts Pat in an uncomfortable position.

T.J. and Jo are bickering as usual when it comes to a sudden, horrible head. They’re sprawled out on couches and sleeping bags in the basement of T.J.’s aunt somewhere in southern Illinois. Really they should probably be kissing up to him right now, since his aunt is feeding and housing them and it’s pretty Children of the Corn outside these walls, but Jo is not one to compromise musical integrity for the sake of social niceties. Apparently.

All anyone wants to do is take an actual fucking shower and watch TV til they fall asleep. They’ve been living like wild animals, basically; Pat can’t remember how long it’s been since they had access to clean towels, a showerhead, and MTV. Tonight should be paradise. Instead, Jo’s got the guitars out. She’s making T.J. run the fingering again and again for Parker Lewis Can’t Lose.

In Pat’s estimation, it’s not going well.

“There! There, you’re doing it again. You’re palming the chord. It fucks up the whole melody when you do that,” Jo’s saying.

“I’m sorry I can’t play it perfectly with you breathing down my neck and yelling!” T.J. snips back.

“Oh, are there conditions under which you _can_ play it right, then? Because I’ve never heard that happen.” Jo’s tone is scathing. Pat can actually see the frustration building in T.J.’s shoulders as they hike up towards his ears. It’s only a matter of time til everyone’s yelling at each other. Again.

Pat looks around the room, trying wildly to identify someone responsible who can intervene in this scenario. But Andy’s in the shower and Pete’s deep in her Sidekick, typing furiously. Pete’s not such a fan of T.J. that she’d come to his rescue anyway. She never seems to have any qualms with the people around her self-destructing. She’s way too comfortable living among landmines.

So Pat will have to do it.

“Jo, uh, maybe give it a rest?” Pat says timidly. Jo glares fucking daggers at her. “Uh, I mean, we’re all pretty tired,” she squeaks.

“You play it for him, Pat,” Jo demands. Oh, Pat wishes she hadn’t gotten involved. “Maybe then he’ll understand what the bridge sounds like when a competent guitarist plays it.”

“That would fucking help, instead of just having to listen to it played by _you_!” T.J. bursts out.

There is a moment of coiled silence. Jo’s eyes narrow into dangerous slits. She regards T.J. coldly.

“Look, I get that you think you’re better than me,” T.J. goes on, oblivious to his peril. “Message fucking received! But you know what? You’re not as good as you think. You’re just a—a man-hating, guitar Nazi bitch!” Boiling over, T.J. wrenches his guitar over his head and throws it. It falls anticlimactically to the sleeping bag-carpeted floor, unharmed.

Pat braces for supernova. Pete doesn’t look up from her phone, but her thumbs stop moving. _All of her_ stops moving, prepared to spring should things break. Pat wonders where she learned to freeze like that. Why she had to.

“Nazi bitch,” Jo repeats, as if confirming this is what T.J. wants to call her.

Maybe T.J. sees his life flash before his eyes. Maybe he’s embarrassed that he threw his guitar like a little kid having a tantrum. Maybe he just remembers that Jo is Jewish. Whatever happens inside his head, Pat watches him begin to deflate.

“I mean, you’re fine or whatever. At the guitar,” he tries to walk it back. It is an inelegant attempt. It seems focused mostly on his own ego. It does not address unintentional ethnic microaggressions, like, _at all_. “But I’m actually—I’m like, pretty good, okay? Everyone says so. I can play lead on shit that’s way more complicated than these little songs. Like, I could play in better bands. And I do get offers.”

Very softly, Jo says, “So why don’t you?”

T.J. blanches. Jo goes on ruthlessly, “If you get so many offers. If you’re such hot shit and I’m not that good anyway.”

“I didn’t mean—” says T.J. But there’s no stopping what he’s set in motion.

“No, I know what you mean. You mean you think you’d be a better lead than me. You mean you want me to get off your dick about your clumsy playing and bad timing and poor attendance of band practice. What I _don’t_ know is why you’re still hanging out fucking up our songs if it’s all such a waste of your time.”

Jo is so calm during all of this that it’s terrifying. Pat decides to never, ever, _ever_ fight with Jo Trohman. She wouldn’t survive it. If Jo coolly yanked open T.J.’s ribcage and ripped out his still-beating heart right now, Pat bets she wouldn’t even blink, not even when she got sprayed in the face with arterial blood.

T.J. gets a funny look on his face. “I used to think you were flirting with me and you were just really bad at it, and that’s why you were always so mean? But I’m realizing right now that no, you really are just a fucking cu—”

Jo doesn’t let him finish. “Get the fuck out of my band,” she says.

“ _Fine_!” T.J. cries. “Get the fuck out of my aunt’s house!”

 

“And then there were four,” Pete says spookily, grinning into the beam of her keychain flashlight.

“Do _not_ ,” Pat says, elbowing Pete in the ribs and making a big production of rolling over. Pat is like. Really not all that comfortable with sleeping in the van. She feels so vulnerable and exposed all the time: anybody could come by while they’re in there. Anybody could look in the windows at them. Anybody could _break_ the windows and get at them. Sure, the same is technically true in houses. But Pat closes the blinds in her bedroom exactly so she doesn’t have to think about this shit in her house. Pat is all about creating the illusion of safety.

Pete’s more about creating the illusion of The Nightmare on Elm Street. Pete gets up on one elbow and leans over Pat, poking her in the side where she’s most ticklish. “C’mon, Stumpette,” Pete pesters her. “I can’t sleep.”

“So you’re making sure I can’t either?”

“That’s the plan, yeah.” Pete’s grinning, the starlight hitting her teeth, gleaming in her dark eyes. After T.J. kicked them out—they had to pull Andy, still soapy, out of the shower—they drove until they found a place to park the van, on the side of the road out in the pitch-black middle of nowhere. Alfalfa fields and night sky and this one Illinois highway, stretching on forever across the flat land before and behind them, are all that’s out there. (Well. Those things, and the rapists and murderers and zombies and whatever other weird shit lives out in corn country.)

It’s Jo’s fault they’re sleeping out here, technically, but it’s hard to really blame her. Things were getting unbearable with T.J. Everyone played their role in it. It’s not useful to point fingers. That, and with the mood Jo’s in, she probably wouldn’t hesitate to toss any finger-pointers out of her van. Jo and Andy are already asleep, though, stretched out in the front seats. Pete’s the one back here keeping Pat awake. Pete, she can blame.

“I was tired be _fore_ we got thrown out,” Pat complains. “I’m crabby, and these windows freak me out, and I just want to sleep.”

“But you can’t sleep through this, Pat! There’s something you _have_ to see.”

“Like the fucking horseshoe crab?” Pat mutters grumpily. But she allows herself to be dragged out of the van and into the night air. Actually, being outside feels _less_ creepy than trying to sleep with all those windows, like she’s a guts-filled pastry in a display case just waiting for some serial killer to come along and skin her. It’s cooler out here, too. It gets really fucking sweaty in that van.

Pete grabs Pat’s hand, an event upon which Pat has no opinion whatsoever, and leads her out into the middle of some farmer’s carefully plowed alfalfa field. The pale green stalks around them tickle their bare legs. Finally, Pete is satisfied with their distance from the road. They sit in the cool dirt.

“Have you ever seen the Milky Way like this before?” Pete asks into the quiet.

And Pat discovers stars in an unpolluted sky are not like stars in the suburbs. The sky isn’t black, not really: it’s a rich, crushed blue, the darkest velvet, deep hues set shining by blue-green streaks of fantastic light. The stars are pinpricks, nestled thicker than freckles, like a salt shaker spilt, like a sapphire shattered. They burn with brilliance, choked dense to form the cosmic band of the Milky Way, which really does looks like a stream of glowing liquid splashed across the sky. Pat didn’t know. Pat’s never seen it. Stars come in so many different sizes; they’re not just blurs of light, but sharp cold points, crisply defined and innumerable. And they don’t stay still, not all of them. They streak across her field of vision quicker than she can wish upon them, burning bits of rock and dust and space junk. Pat’s not a poet, not like Pete, so she can’t begin to describe what she sees.

But she knows it’s fucking tremendous.

Pete is silent for once in her life. They sit and watch the sky til Pat’s skin starts to pucker with goosebumps, til her neck aches from being craned back, til they have soaked in so much cosmic radiance they have their own glow. The whole time Pete holds her hand: loose, without expectation or demand, as if Pat will pull away at any moment.

By the time they’re back in the van, Pat’s forgotten that the windows are creepy. Now they’re more like frames around the impossible vista of the stars. She falls asleep as soon as her head hits her pillow. She still hasn’t let go of Pete’s hand.

*

Their next show is unexpectedly their best ever. They make a killing, and only have to split it four ways. Eighty bucks each is a lot of gasoline and Taco Bell. Jo would like to think it’s all down to her hard work hyping the band and cutting out the weak link in their line-up, but realistically, it’s probably because they open for Rise Against, a band that’s on its way to blowing up. The bar is packed. But there are some people there for them, too, she thinks: people who press to the front during their set, people who know enough words to sing along. Listen, if they know the words, they didn’t learn them on the spot from Pat—girl can’t enunciate to save her life. These are people, Jo thinks, who have come to more than one show. People who have listened to the shitty live recordings on their shitty Myspace page. People who are listening to them on purpose.

Pete kicks off the set by introducing their act. She uses the band name she’s been pushing lately: Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off. After she spits out that mouthful, Jo says into her own mic, “But our friends call us Fall Out Boy.”

Their friend Tim, planted in the crowd with instructions to support Jo’s agenda, takes the name and turns it into a chant. Jo watches Pete closely for signs of pushback, but she’s smiling, shaking her head, laughing. “Okay,” she says into her mic, her words all but eaten up by the crowd chanting. It’s hard not to be affected by it all. They’ve never had a crowd chanting their name before. They’ve barely ever had a crowd that was even _interested_ before. Pete says, “I guess we’re Fall Out Boy.”

Late that night, a manic mix of high from the energy of Rise Against’s set, wiped out by the exertion of their own set, and amped on both from the partying they stayed to do after, the four of them check into a shady motel. They’re feeling like rock stars, like this tour is a rocket launch and it’s all upwards momentum from here. It feels like nothing, dropping $100 on a place to shower and sleep. It feels like their fists will be as stuffed with cash every night. People were chanting their _name_ up there. People were singing their _songs_. Meteoric rise to fame: achievement unlocked.

They interrupt each other’s showers, bursting into the room to rehash highlights of the show or flush the toilet to make the water go cold and make Pat shriek or flash the lights to make Pete finish faster. Extravagantly, they buy snacks from the overpriced vending machines and spread out a feast on the dingy comforters. They’ve been on the road for just over two weeks, and the worst mattress feels like a cloud by this point. Just being in a _room_ with a bed eases the chronic van-induced crick in Jo’s neck.

They swap pillows, settle in two to a bed: Pete with Andy, Jo with Pat. They stare down the most potentially restful night of sleep they’ve had in weeks and none of them seem tired. The lights stay on. They talk and talk.

“With T.J. gone, we can talk about girl stuff!” Jo says at some point.

Everyone immediately makes fun of her. “Oh thank god, I have this monologue prepared about the consistency of my periods that I’ve been dying to—” Andy can’t even finish her sentence, she’s laughing too hard.

“Who wants to exchange French braid tips and plan our dream weddings?” Pat asks in a ridiculous Valley girl voice.

“OMG, ladies, tell me allll about how you lost your virginity!” faux-squeals Pete.

But actually, the virginity question lands. Pat starts, like, full-body blushing as soon as Pete asks it. The temperature in the bed she’s sharing with Jo rises at least two degrees from her discomfort. “I don’t know what you diseased sluts do over there,” Jo proclaims, “but this is a bed of _virgins_. Right, Pat?”

“Um, depending on your definition of what, um, sex is?” Pat adds, tomato-red and plainly mortified.

“Patricia Stump, you _scarlet harlot_ ,” Jo gasps. Andy and Pete look similarly shell-shocked. To Jo it is very obvious that they will never know peace again until they hear this story.

Pat is so embarrassed, she covers her face with a pillow. “I can’t believe I said that,” she moans. “Stupid. Stupid!”

“Now you have to tell us, dude,” Andy says.

“Just don’t make me go first,” Pat begs from under the pillow.

“ _I’ll_ go first,” Jo volunteers wickedly. “Once upon a time, I kept my legs crossed and thought of Jesus. The end.”

Pat kicks her under the covers. “I’m not telling you anything ever again!”

Pete is uncharacteristically silent through all of this. It’s not like her to miss an opportunity to tease Pat. Jo can’t interpret the look on her face. Andy, noticing, elbows Pete gently.

“The story of how I lost my virginity?” Pete says at last. She shows her teeth in a good imitation of her own smile. Her voice is wooden as she jokes, “I mean, which time?” She launches into a truly terrible impression of Madonna, singing, “I made it throooough the wild-er-ness! Somehow I made it through! Like a virgin! Touched for the—”

Jo chucks a pillow with precision honed by years of softball. It glances off Pete’s head. The singing stops. Jo pokes the lump of bedsheets that is their _actual_ vocalist and says, “Okay so like. Please explain to me about the alternate definitions of sex you and kinkster Garrett have been using.”

“I still have a hymen, if that’s what you’re asking,” wobbles out from under the pillow.

“Okay, okay. Since everyone else here is being an asshole, I’ll go,” says Andy.

“Speaking of intact hymens!” Jo riffs.

Andy shoots her a look. “You probably busted yours on a tampon years ago, Trohman,” Andy informs her. “It’s not, like, a penis-specific membrane. God. You’re acting like a medieval lord about this. Lesbian acts can still, um. _Puncture_.”

“You can just say penetrate,” Pat groans from under the pillow. “I do _know_ about penetration.”

“I want to hear Andy’s story,” says Pete. “She never does storytime.”

Andy clears her throat grandly. “It all began six years ago at sleepaway camp… My mom was obsessed with sending me to the girl’s camp she went to every summer. Thought it would teach me, I don’t know. How to be a godly woman who enjoyed the outdoors? I don’t know why camping with a bunch of other girls was supposed to make me into a skirt-wearing heterosexual.”

“I’ve heard the chemical agents in bug spray can cause that,” Jo interjects sagely.

“Or maybe she just wanted a couple weeks off from hearing me very slowly get better at the drums every year. Anyway, any chance to get out of the house, right? So by the summer I was seventeen, I was too old to go as a regular camper, so I was a junior counselor that year. And oh man, guys. There was this girl in my cabin. Her name was Eileen.”

Everybody oohs appropriately. Then Pete says, “Wait, so you—preyed on a younger camper?”

Andy’s jaw drops open. She smacks Pete in the shoulder with obvious force. “I fucking did not! She preyed on _me_ , if anything. There was this… vibe. It was a very sexy vibe. A very _consensual_ vibe. She had this dark curly hair, freckles…” Andy sighs happily. She turns and says mostly to Pete, “You know how sometimes, the way a girl looks at you, you just know? Her eyes kind of… catch on you? And then drag away slowly, like even across the room the two of you are magnetized? Eileen was like that. Every time she looked at me it was Significant. And she touched her lips a lot—they were sunburnt, so they were peeling. She was always putting on chapstick.”

“Definite lesbian move,” Pete agrees.

“ _I_ use chapstick,” Pat says. She’s poked her head out from under the pillow.

Andy raises an eyebrow and surveys Pat for a moment. “Better switch to Blistex, babe,” she says.  Jo has no idea what that’s supposed to mean, and judging by Pat’s face, she doesn’t either. “I was lifeguarding the day she did her swim test. At camp you have to swim the whole length of this roped-off area underwater, right? And then you have to tread water for 60 seconds to prove that, like, you would take slightly longer to drown than somebody else, I guess. And when Eileen was treading water, she went under, and she didn’t come back up. I dived in, kind of panicking—who wants to be the one lifeguarding for the first-ever camp drowning? I feel like that’s the plot of Friday the 13th waiting to happen—and instead of a drowning girl I found a very cunning one, who pulled me down to the sandy muck at the bottom of the lake and kissed me.”

“And that’s how lesbians lose their virginity,” Pete says. “Just like mermaids.”

Andy smacks her again, more gently this time. “I thought you wanted to hear this story?”

“I want to hear anything you’ll tell me, beautiful mermaid.”

Andy shoves Pete over, since smacking doesn’t seem to be doing the job. Pete flops heavily to the bed giggling. “So _anyway_. After that we made out pretty much every chance we could get, and when we could sneak enough time together things went farther than that, and one sticky afternoon in August she faked cramps to skip an off-grounds canoeing trip, I volunteered to stay with her, and—that was that.”

“’That was that?’ What kind of deflowering is that?” Jo complains.

“We fucked all day and everyone’s hymen burst like a balloon. Happy?” Andy epilogues.

Jo pantomimes a balloon bursting and blood raining down over herself, making everyone laugh, even Pat.

“Did you ever see each other again?” Pat asks. She’s still got the pillow clutched over her head like a strange babushka.

Andy smiles guiltily, nodding. “Just once. I went to her family’s for Thanksgiving, up in Minnesota? We _definitely_ got caught. I was not invited back. Still. We had a good time.”

“Okay, well in my story there are no balloons,” Pat warns them. Her cheeks are still flushed like roses in early bloom, but she’s getting words out and she’s not hiding her face. “There’s just, um. Just oral sex.” She says it in such a tumblerush of words that at first Jo doesn’t catch what she’s saying. Andy nods approvingly and Pete makes a face like a grimace before she pulls her hoodie up over her chin and hides it.

“ _And_?” Jo prompts. Jo really is proud of being a virgin. She’s holding out for a different caliber of dude than she’s met at hardcore shows or high school hallways. Guys like that are qualified to buy CDs for her, sure. But she definitely doesn’t want to be the body upon which some poor, fumbling jackanape learns about female orgasms. She has a particular horror of being the first person to inform a boy about the existence of the clitoris. It’s just—she just can’t see it happening. She’s happy to wait, even if that means missing out on 27 seconds of awkward ‘technically it’s intercourse’ in somebody’s mom’s basement—what a devastating loss. But none of that means she doesn’t think about sex, like, constantly. She wants to hear every detail of every story Pat’s got on the topic.

Pat, pink-faced, shrugs. “It was weird I guess? I don’t know. I mean. Are girls even supposed to—like it?”

“Yes,” Andy and Pete say in perfect unison. They exchange a look and both start laughing. “Definitely yes,” Andy repeats.

“Well anyway. I’m planning on, you know. With Garrett. I think he’s… the one.”

“I had no idea Garrett could free us from the Matrix,” Jo teases. “Can he also stop bullets? Does he do any tricks with helicopters. How’s his hacking?” Mostly she’s making corny jokes to buy time for Pete to get whatever the hell is happening to her face back under control. Their last band blowout was like, barely 24 hours ago. The tour might not survive another one. They don't really have any band members to spare at this point. Pete’s super un-secret feelings about Garrett are _so_ not up for discussion.

But Pete’s not receiving the psychic distress signals Jo’s sending her, because she looks more and more like she’s going to open her mouth and make some unwanted comment. Pete starts to speak and Jo blurts out, “So that just leaves the town bicycle over here! C’mon, Petey. You’ve _got_ to have a good story.”

Everyone turns to Pete expectantly.

Pete’s face is sharp in the wrong places. There’s a shadow in her eyes Jo can’t read. Her voice is subdued as she says, “There’s nothing to tell. It’s like Jo said. I’m a huge slut.”

The careless words and thoughtless ribs offered over years of friendship come back to Jo all at once. It is a deep-sea kind of crush, dark and blue and drowning. Jo never thought it bothered Pete. After all, Pete uses the words herself. It’s just how girls talk to each other. It’s just how people talk to girls! Jo stumbles over an apology she’s not even sure she needs to make. “I'm sorry I called you a—I didn't mean—”

Pete shakes her head, says, “It’s fine. You were just being descriptive.”

“Pete—” Jo tries.

But Pete cuts her off. “Everyone already knows about me, Jo. You didn't change anything by saying it.”

The room settles into terrible silence. No one quite looks at anyone else, except Pete, who stares around at them, one after another, just daring them to editorialize on her storied sexual history.

After a while, they turn off the lights and lay down to sleep by mutual silent agreement. It’s very quiet in the hotel room, except for the sound of occasional rustling sheets and four girls carefully controlling their breathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this chapter more than air. I hope you do too!
> 
> Fun fact: I was doing all this research for absurd roadside attractions that would be irresistible to teenage girl!Pete, and I found the crab, and I read all about it and I wrote this scene that I love, and _only then_ did I find out it appears in one of the Twilight movies? Sorry. I couldn't change it. I was too fucking attached. _One time, my dad caught me a horseshoe crab, and I asked him if throwing it back would bring our luck back._


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Pete breaks herself, using whatever is at hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning, kiddos: this chapter contains themes of sexual violence. Nothing that you are about to read is nonconsensual, but it isn't necessarily easy either. This is something that I needed to write about, for me, for girl!Pete, for the women and girls and all of you out there who have ever borne the violence that is female socialization. If it upsets you, that is because it is upsetting. We should all be upset. I will go back to keeping you safe and cleaning our collective wounds more gently next week.
> 
> If you want something happy and fluffy of your very own, I'd suggest placing a bid in the [Fic Against Fascism charity drive](www.ficagainstfascism.wordpress.com/request)! There are works you can request for as little as $5-10, and every bit helps us make the world safer and more just.
> 
> Otherwise, drink some water; listen to the [Girl Out Boy playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/marvelgirl238/playlist/7Ja7oPJdFfVAjnYiAjgvRj) and punch things; hit me up if you want some angry or hopeful feminist book recs; and maybe I'll see some of you at the St Louis FOB show tonight. 
> 
> Thank you so, so much for being here with me. This story is the most important thing I have ever done, and each of you who reaches out to tell me you are feeling it, too, absolutely blow me away. I want this to be a safe space for all of us.

 

peteisacreep.livejournal.com

**let’s pretend i don’t exist**

 

Monday, June 24, 2002

Subject: _boy/girl problems_

Time: _3:09 am._

we’re only honest when we’re pretending. we’re only honest as we’re pretending.

is it always like this with girls? like a car crash but you dont realize you’re hit til years after its over. i dont remember it being like this before. does that mean it never has been? how good is my memory anyway. do you ever have those memories from childhood where everything is done in pastel, muted colors & dusty smears, and you don’t know if its real or a dream?

you make me feel like that.

we hold hands under the stars & i know. it’s never been like this before.

peterabbit

++++: 12 think i’m a creep - what are you thinking?.

 

Thursday, June 27, 2002

Subject: _calling all lovers_

Time: _11:11am._

sometimes you wait til the magic minute to send out your words. that way they can be wishes. tell me if my spell finds you. tell me if the curse is working. when i grow up i will be a witch & not just a monster. people will cross the street to avoid me, babies will cry when i pass by, you will get goosebumps when i think of you. finally i will deserve everything i get

but that’s only if i grow up.

i don’t know if i believe in that

i hate you & i don’t even know you. you hate me too. i could feel it as soon as we crossed state lines. back in illinois but not for long. what’s the word for animosity that pulses thru the earth, finding my feet and burning up into my heart all the way from where you are. its a leyline but made of hate.

well fuck you too buddy. you think nobodys hated me before? you think i dont have enemies.

i watched a boy get blown to dust—no, not like that—and he didnt deserve it and i didnt stop it. all boys deserve it. we’re a 4-piece now and patty holds that guitar like she was born with it. all these x chromosomes make us stronger. you all are a house of cards, a dustbowl ghosttown. we are coming for you. we will blow you all away.

there are people coming to our shows who know the words. maybe you can be one of them?

st louis - RKDE - june 29

kansas city - coda - june 30

des moines - skate north incrediroll - july 1

iowa city - blue moose - july 3

twin cities coming up next. cant wait to see you done up in fireworks.

++++: 25 think i’m a creep - what are you thinking?.

 

Saturday, June 29, 2002

Subject: _carnivorous rex_

Time: _1:36 pm._

my new motto is never come between a wolf and her prey.

yes, thats right. we were the wolves this whole time. you only thought you were the ones doing the hunting. girls are ferocious. i will eat you alive.

i want to be eaten alive. sometimes you long for the most terrible things. that way you dont have to be scared anymore.

what if this whole journal is a suicide note. maybe everything thats ever written is that way. one day it’s all just detritus, pages blowing over headstones. just a different kind of dust thats left behind. we race death & no one wins.

i wish i was as invisible as you make me feel.

pw

++++: 6 think i’m a creep - what are you thinking?.

*

On the way into St. Louis they pass signs for the town of Wentzville, but no one is feeling very indulgent of Pete’s whims after what happened in Ohio, so they drive on by. She feels an unbridled wildness stirring inside her, like she might do anything. Her heart flutters like a bird trying to escape her chest, urgent and self-denied. She picks at her cuticles, letting the pressure build in her til she can’t take it anymore, then rips a tiny tear. Cherry-red beads of blood, a quick sharp sting like an exhale: these are the forms of her relief.

But it’s only a moment til the pressure builds all over again. She needs to wreck something bigger than a cuticle to get this itching out. Her leg bounces so fast Andy scolds her twice, and still she doesn’t stop.

Their friends are coming to their show tonight. Which, great. Awesome. She’s excited somebody in the audience will know the words, will actually be excited to see them play. They’ll all sleep in a pile in somebody’s sister’s living room, after a night of drinking and dancing and stupid bets and trespassing and whatever else they can stir up for fun. Pete’s certain she can find somebody to fuck, like maybe that will pin down the restless feeling inside her, make her remember that her bones are attached to all this rustling skin, that her body is what she lives inside of, that she must care for it as if it is her home. Because it is her only home.

Tonight Pete just feels like burning up.

This morning Pete eavesdropped on one side of a phone conversation. “Tonight? Really?” Pat said delightedly into her little Nokia flip phone. “Oh, we usually find some place to crash. Yeah, with whoever. ...No, usually girls. I don’t know. Not always. ...Really? In St. Louis? Oh my god, that’s so _sweet_ , the band will love— ...Oh. Oh. Okay. ...So just, like. You and me. ...No, I’m excited! This is what excitement sounds like.” Then she laughed for slightly too long and said, “Okay, babe. See you soon. Yeah. Love you too.”

Pete gave her a look—there’s not much privacy in the van, so she didn’t see the point in pretending she hadn’t been listening—and Pat flashed a sheepish smile. Her eyes were coltish, half-spooked.

“Hope you losers enjoy that living room floor,” Pat said then, covering everything else over with  bravado. “My boyfriend got us a _hotel room_.”

Because of course one of the people coming down to support them tonight is Garrett.

Catcalls erupted from Andy and Jo. Jo started singing a porno beat, filling the car with general musical lewdness. “Hymens bursting like balloons!” Andy cackled.

Pete. Pete didn’t fucking say anything at all.

So she’s been thinking all day about why this bothers her so much. She is an archaeologist of her own fossilized reactions. Sure, the dude’s a slimeball and Pat deserves better; this is true of every dude ever touched by the sun. Pete’s disliked Garrett from the first time she laid eyes on him. But doesn’t she support her ladies? Wouldn’t she die to defend their right to make bad choices? Has she ever made any other kind herself?

Pete remembers, too, the suspicion with which Andy regarded her when she launched her initial anti-Garrett campaign. But that was about the _music_ , the band. Pete’s motives have always been pure.

Haven’t they?

It’s not like Pete wishes Pat was spending the night in a hotel room with _her_ instead of Pat’s age- and gender-appropriate boyfriend.

Is it?

Pete’s heart is beating louder and louder in her ears. She’s starting to feel carsick. Her insides are caustic and curling. Like, if she doesn’t get out of this AC-deficient deathtrap and stretch her legs soon, she’s going to choke on copper, claustrophobic air.

Pete tears a hangnail off brutally with her teeth, and in the clean burst of pain that follows, she has an epiphany.

She knows what her problem is.

It’s not about the hotel room. It’s not about who Pat fucks. It’s the words _love you too_ . Those words are meant to _mean_ something. Like a promise. Like Pat’s young, quivering heart, offered up without defenses. Fucking gift wrapped.

You’re supposed to trust the people you love. Pete knows Pat hasn’t had to learn not to. Pete wants her to stay shiny like that. Undamaged. Clean.

Pete wants to protect her heart.

And maybe the way to do that is breaking it before anyone else can.

If Pete knows—if she beyond all reasonable doubt, absolutely, factually, _knows_ —that the boy Pat thinks she’s in love with is a cheating dirtbag, she’s obligated to protect her friend, isn’t she? She _has_ to tell Pat what she knows. If she doesn’t, that would, like, basically made her an accomplice to Pat’s eventual heartbreak. If Pat is _in love_ with this guy, well, Pete’s obligated to step in. A fling was one thing. Feelings are another.

Pete knows what she needs to do.

She needs proof.

 

RKDE is by far the coolest venue they’ve played. It’s in a part of town where she can’t tell if she feels unsafe because she’s been trained to associate low socioeconomic status with dangerousness, because it’s actually sketchy, or because she feels unsafe everywhere. It’s weird how much she feels like a white girl in this neighborhood. Brown and black faces populate the street, the venue. The hardcore scene is so _white_ , she’s usually the brownest person in the room.

Tonight she’s self-conscious in torn-up jean shorts, fishnets, a sleeveless green turtleneck, and safety pins through her ears. She’s written SLUT on her knuckles with Sharpie in a nod to Bikini Kill, but now it feels like she’s wearing a target. Her studded leather jacket makes her feel kind of stupid instead of tough. Not for the first time in her life, she experiences the complicated longing for her skin to be darker, like it is in her baby pictures. She feels a vague sort of treason for always straightening her hair. There are so many ways she’s invisible. So many ways she makes herself that way. Her lips are screaming, screaming, screaming while all the rest of her does is erase.

The club is a weird combination of bar/art gallery/skee ball parlor. It fills a high-ceilinged industrial space on the second floor of a building fronted by empty display windows, ancient sun-bleached advertisements, and boarded-over broken glass. Community murals have sprung up on the boards, a simple unpolished art style that is both tender and aggressive. Pete likes it enormously.

They are the second band tonight—the first time in their short history they’re not opening. They’re all jangly with the nerves of it. They’ve never played to a crowd already warm and ready, full of expectations. By the time the club starts to fill and their friends begin to arrive, Pete is already drunk. She didn’t mean to be. Everyone’s annoyed at her for it but not saying so. They all avoid each other, even the friends she hasn’t seen in weeks who drove hours to see them play. She flirts with strangers instead. She concentrates on losing herself in the crowd.

The moment Garrett arrives, she starts to tail him. Every time he talks to a girl, Pete is there, glaring. Every time his eyes slide a trail of slime across someone’s young body, Pete’s fingernails bite deeper into her palms. She imagines slapping him with a bloody handprint. Every time, dancing with a glowing, nervy Pat, his gaze and hips and hands wander in the direction of other dancers, Pete takes a huge and bracing gulp of her drink. Then she gets a new drink and starts again.

She is watching.

But how to catalogue these offenses? How to document the minute disloyalties that add up to a larger betrayal? Pat is blind to them all. If she could see what an asshole Garrett was, she wouldn’t need Pete as a sentry in the first place.

Then Pete remembers she’s a girl, not a panopticon.

There’s a simpler way.

Garrett has noticed Pete haunting him all night. It is the simplest thing to catch his eye, to glance significantly in the direction of the dingy hallway that houses the club’s office/storeroom/backstage space. She acts as a magnet and exerts her pull. God, he follows so easy. It’s almost an accident. One look and he’s hers. She watches, sick and fluttery, as he lies to Pat. As without remorse he walks away.

Then all at once it’s the two of them in the storeroom, the door slipping closed behind Garrett, and Pete doesn’t have a plan.

Lucky for her—if lucky is the word—Garrett seems to.

“You’ve been watching me all night,” he says. “I’ve seen you.”

He takes a step towards her. Pete turns away by reflex. She tries to make herself deliberate and composed. She goes to sit on the edge of the cluttered desk. She rolls her shoulders out prettily, musses her own hair.

“Sounds like you’re the one who’s been watching me.” The coy, sexy lilt in her voice is automatic. She tips her chin prettily, familiar with her sharpest angles, and affects a lipsticked smirk. She keeps her features callous, expertly bored. She knows nothing makes a man’s pulse ramp harder than her disinterest in him.

Garrett steps closer, a lurch to his motion like he’s been drinking too. Not as much as Pete, though. She’s made of bubbles. She doesn’t feel anything. No one’s been drinking as much as her.

“How long as we gonna play this game?” Garrett asks. His voice is thickening with aggression. In Pete’s experience, this is the same thing as desire. Her heart thrills in her breast, her fear response flooding her bloodstream with cortisol. Sometimes Pete’s amygdala is the closest thing she has to an erogenous zone. It’s better, when she’s with girls—but  also it’s not. She needs the fear. She’s sick like that. When Pete feels safe she doesn’t know how to get off. She only knows the one way of giving up control.

Pete watches his advance with her chin angled up, her gaze defiant through narrowed lids. “Until I get bored of it,” she says coolly.

Garrett’s so close, now, she can feel his breath on her skin. She is aware of being trapped, here, with the desk at her back and Garrett between her and the door. She shakes. She is so angry, so scared. Her gut is a tangle of snakes. Her mouth tastes a little bloody from the hole she’s been chewing in her cheek. Her whole body screams _run away, run away, run away_ . Pete mistakes it for _run towards_. After all, she knows one way to lock herself back into her body and break free of it at once. She knows one way to be visible, to exist. She knows one way to stop hurting like this and hurt a different way instead.

Just one way. She knows just one.

“You’re such a fucking tease,” Garrett growls. His teeth are so close to her throat, now. He is so much larger than she.

Pete’s mouth shapes a burning, raw, pure pleasure grin. The knife’s edge feels like a lot of things, but she can’t deny it feels good. “Not teasing,” she murmurs, just for him, just for him. “ _Waiting_ . I know I’m in your dirtiest daydreams. I know what you want. I’ve just been waiting for you to be man enough to _take it_.”

Her words are spark enough to set the room alight. All the tension and control explodes into sudden, dynamic violence. Garrett shoves her, hard, and she slams back into the wall the desk is up against. Her head hits brick and her vision flickers like lights in California. He presses her in place with his body, suddenly so big; Pete wants to scream but it comes out a laugh, taunting and sexual. He kisses her teeth-first, like he’ll tear her apart, like he’ll chew her mouth into a wound that is literal and not just metaphoric. Pete wants it. Pete wants to be split open. Pete wants to be destroyed. She kisses him back with all of that, that jagged hateful longing. Let him think it’s for him. She kisses like resistance, like fighting back, like her tongue’s the only muscle on her body that doesn’t know how to freeze.

His hands are not gentle. He gropes up under her top with force, palming her breast so hard she hisses in pain. There will be bruises. There always are. He bites her lips til it splits in his teeth. She makes a fist of his dick and drags him closer to her, hoping it hurts. Half on the desk, he tears at her throat with every intention of breaking skin, leaving bruises, making marks.

“You fucking coward,” Pete spits round ragged breaths and little involuntary gasps of pain. He shoves his hand down the front of her shorts, his fingers digging at her like claws, catching and tearing. There are so many types of fluid the body will lubricate itself with. Pete’s glad to learn he’s not choosy either. He’s on her rough and she grabs him back, with tooth and nail giving him just enough pain to goad him into really hurting her. He has part of one hand inside her, the other knocking her head against the wall with a fistful of hair, and Pete feels low in her belly something like hope—hope she will finally disappear for real. Hope that he will finally be the one to black her out, erase her name, pull her pin so she can self-destruct.

God, god, that hope feels so good. Quick, slick, golden. It makes her wet. She feels her sense of self start to slip, start to pull up and out of this shitty dirty body, start to float up towards her favorite vantage point somewhere in the highest corner of the room. Out of her body, out of her mind, out of her control—

And that’s when the door opens, the noise of the club and the happy, jostling bodies of her bandmates pouring in. Of course it is: that’s how she orchestrated this, isn’t it? That’s how she planned it.

Garrett leaps off of her, holds his hands in front of his groin to hide the denim evidence of his erect dick. Pete lays back on the desk, playing despoiled like decadent, her head held up by the wall, and lets her panicked breaths shudder through her. Her eyes are fixed on the point of the ceiling where her dissociated self was floating, a moment ago.

Their set is next. Here is her band to get their equipment, the equipment they stowed in this room a little over an hour ago. Here is Pat, first through the door, bloodless and frozen.

Pete doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to.

Pat makes a wordless howl, her face crumpling around the impact of this injury. She turns away, pushes past Andy and Jo and out of this small dark room.

Garrett doesn’t even glance back at Pete. He follows Pat, useless explanations and excuses rushing out of his swollen mouth in a jumble. Why would he look back? She’s spoiled now, used up, bloody and real and therefore unloveable. He’s gotten what he wanted.

So has she.

It’s such a narrow margin in which to exist.

Andy and Jo stand on either side of the doorway, having parted to the let the quarreling lovers through. The club has full view of Pete in the frame of them, splayed out and wrecked, blood on her tongue, skin bruising calico.

“Pete. How could you?” Andy says at last.

The question is so absurd, laughter starts to pour out of her. Laughter like vomit, locking up her throat, knotting her spine rigid, making her body jerk and quake without her instruction. Laughter like purging. Pete stares, stares at the ceiling and blinks away tears.

“What else would I do?” Pete laughs horribly. She knows how she looks to them. How she sounds. She’s only surprised that they’re surprised. That they didn’t know this about her already.

Because she’s always been like this.

She’s Pete Wentz. She ruins everything she touches.

She makes sure of it.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which no one is okay, and the girls go to a nuclear wasteland.
> 
> Enjoy the playlist I've been writing to [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/marvelgirl238/playlist/7Ja7oPJdFfVAjnYiAjgvRj).

 

“I just don’t understand how you could do this to me!” The words come out hot and cold, strong and weak, choking and broken all at once. Pat can’t even see, she’s crying so hard. The world presses close and hot and horrible, her stomach lurching like she’ll empty it over the balcony railing. The loss, the pain, is physical. She can’t tell if she’s whispering or shouting.

“After everything! We were  _ friends _ —we  _ loved each other _ —we were building something together.” Her spit thickens like it’s venom. She’s not breathing enough. Maybe she’s not breathing at all.

Pat swings her fist into the brick exterior wall of this fucking club they’re somehow supposed to play in all of ten minutes. Her knuckles burst bright, her skin giving way to hot prickling blood. She doesn’t even let herself really slug it. She’s thinking about how she needs her knuckles, she needs them nubile to play T.J.’s parts, because Jo didn’t care enough about the band to control herself either. 

“Am I the only fucking person who even cares about this band?” Pat snarls. “Because it fucking feels like it!”

She spins around to face her betrayer. Tears are streaming, streaming down her pink swollen cheeks. She doesn’t give a shit about the snot coming from her nose. She isn’t going to care about looking pretty ever again. She’s disgusting, she’s completely undesirable, she’ll never be able to hold anyone’s interest or handle a spotlight. She knows that for a fact now. It’s a relief, almost—in the way that finding your tires slashed before you leave for a party is a relief. The worst fucking thing has happened. You don’t have to try anymore. You don’t have to fucking  _ bother _ .

“I don’t ever want to fucking see you again!” Pat yells. 

“I don’t know why you’re yelling at  _ me _ ! This is  _ her _ fucking fault!”

Pat looks at Garrett, really looks at him. This boy that she thought she loved. She feels—howling rage. Bottomless hurt. Obliteration. But he’s right. She doesn’t feel it about  _ him _ . She is surprised to find that right now, she’s so angry she doesn’t feel anything about him at all. 

“You’re right,” Pat says. “You’ve always been an asshole. I’ve heard the way you talk about Courtney Love. I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Garrett’s mouth flops uselessly, like she hit him instead of the wall. Her knuckles burn and drip. Pat wants to tear off all her skin and reveal steel-plated armor beneath. Pat wants to change her face and name and life. Pat wants to quit this relationship and quit this band and quit this whole bullshit high school in the suburbs thing. She wants to run away to Mexico. She wants to start over. She wants to be anyone else.

“You’re seriously gonna side with Pete over me?” Garrett’s shouting. Pat recoils from the name.  _ That’s _ what she never wants to hear or see again. That name. That—that—

Traitor. Judas.  _ Bitch _ .

Now that Pat’s not yelling, Garrett fills the space she left. “I don’t know what you thought you saw, but I was the victim! She was the  _ aggressor _ , Pat. She came onto ME. It was fucking  _ entrapment _ . You know she tries to fuck anything that moves. Diseased bitch! Banging Jo isn’t enough  for her, she’s gotta come after me too. She’ll probably go after you or Andy next. How can you blame me for what she fucking did? You  _ know _ she’s a whore.”

Pat’s been hit by so much today it’s like she’s training to be a boxer. But no matter how battered, her brain snags on something in the poison Garrett’s spewing. Jo.  _ Banging Jo.  _ “Pete and—Jo?” She tries the words out loud. 

This morning she would have said it was impossible for something like that to go on without her seeing it. By now she knows there’s no end to the things she doesn’t see. 

The things she doesn’t want to see.

Garrett’s still so focused on acquitting himself that he doesn’t hear her. Pat looks at him, really looks at him. His weak chin, his dirty hair, his stupid grunge t-shirts that his mom buys at Kohl’s. God, she fucking hates him. Is this the first time she’s seen him clearly or is it just that heartbreak makes her mean? 

He babbles, “If you’d come in a minute later you’d have seen me pushing her off me and getting the fuck out of there. I don’t want anything to  _ do _ with her, babe. I only want you.” 

Everything Pat feels is so complicated. She doesn’t know where to begin. Pete and  _ Jo _ . Just like she assumed when she first saw them together. Has it been going on all that time? Why does it feel like walking in on Garrett and Pete all over again? Why is her life turning into one of those nightmares where you just fall forever and ever into the dark, your stomach sick as a salt-shriveled slug, your screams so ceaseless they become white noise?

She loved him, this asshole who cheated on her. At least, she thought she did. She thought she loved Pete too, and look what Pete could do to her without remorse. Look how Pete could hurt her without even coming after her to explain why. Who does she hate more right now? Garrett or Pete or herself? 

It’s time for her fucking band to go on, maybe for the last time. She doesn’t have the time or emotional resilience to deal with Garrett and then get onto a stage with Pete, truly she does not. She takes a breath, finding herself steady despite the way the floor just keeps dropping out beneath her feet. “Garrett?” she says. “I don’t believe you, and I don’t care. You can either pay the cover charge or you can leave. You’re not on the guest list anymore.”

“Patty,” he pleads. “C’mon. Our hotel room. Let me make it up to you tonight.”

Pat likes how anger feels. It is so much more bracing, so much stronger than hurt. She lets it billow and burn, huge and righteous in her chest. “You think I’m going to fuck you  _ now _ ?” she asks. It’s so ludicrous that despite the tears and snot still all over her face, despite the heartbreak raw and raging in her breast, Pat snorts on a laugh. “Get out of my life, Garrett. I’m done with you.”

His face contorts ugly, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing, like he’s never been told  _ no _ in his whole life. “You don’t get to break up with me! That’s not how this works!” he sputters while she pushes past him, back into the venue. The last thing she hears before the door closes on him is the indignant cry, “I’m hotter than you!”

 

Pat moves through the club in a fugue. The crowd is getting restless, waiting for her band to come on. She knows two things: she is not going into that storeroom, so somebody else had better get her guitar; and she is not getting on a stage with Pete Wentz tonight or ever again.

Good thing they have friends here tonight. She finds Tim, whose band they played with last night too. He knows their set and he used to play bass in Arma Angelus. She knows he can handle anything Pete can. “Pete’s too fucked up to play,” Pat tells him. She does not consider this a lie. “Will you cover for us?” He’s a good person, a good friend to the band. He wears a look of concern while he agrees.

Now she just needs to find someone to tell Pete she’s not playing tonight. But Pat doesn’t find her bandmates anywhere. For a horrible, sick stretch of time, she scans fruitlessly through the club and thinks that maybe she was wrong about them too, just like she was wrong about Garrett, about Pete. Maybe Jo and Andy are both on Pete’s side. Stupid, stupid. They’ve all known each other for years. She was never really their friend. She was their vocalist, that’s all. She’s confused proximity with loyalty. It’s not Pete who won’t be welcome on the stage, it’s—

“Pat! There you are. I was so worried!” Pat barely has time to register the sight of Andy before she’s being swept into a hug. Her body relaxes by instinct, pressed into the soft familiarity of a person she can’t help but think of as  _ friend _ . Andy’s arms are strong around her, and her self-loathing doubt evaporates. 

A small, stowaway sob sneaks out of Pat. She realizes that if she lets Andy hug her too long, the anger will go soft and the blind grief of heartbreak will start seeping through. Pat pulls away, swiping her cheeks clear of tears with her forearm. She looks up at Andy, every nerve raw. 

“I’m so sorry,” Andy says. Pat can’t let herself hear it. Not now.

“Tim McIlrath is on bass for us tonight. I told him Pete couldn’t play.” The words are wooden, bare of her gratitude and relief. Pat tries to keep herself completely walled off from anything she’s feeling. It’s the only way she gets through this set.

Andy nods, understanding what she needs right away. “Of course. I’ll—um—”

“Tell Pete.” Pat bites out the name. Pete, Pete, Pete. It’s always about fucking  _ Pete _ . She never wants to say it again. “Jo’s with her, I assume?” Pat wonders how that all works. Is Jo yelling at Pete right now, or is this just an ordinary Friday for the two of them? What Garrett said was true: Pete fucks everyone. There’s no way her and Jo could be together if it wasn’t some kind of—open arrangement. Pat’s guts are so curdled by this point, they’re cottage fucking cheese.

“Uh, yeah,” Andy says. Her face is pained. “Okay. I’ll bring your guitar. Meet you on stage in 5.”

Alone again, Pat orders a drink at the bar. She looks so dour, no one asks for her ID. “Are you here for someone in the band, hon?” the bartender asks instead. Pat does not tip him. She slugs back burning well whiskey and tries to confuse its heat for comfort.

Pat realizes she’s got Pete’s beanie on her head and can’t fucking bear it. She yanks off the hat, not caring what her hair looks like underneath. She leaves it on the bar.

*

Andy’s having a hard time being around Pete right now. 

Andy’s whole life has been about camouflage. It’s been about—survival.  Getting through fast without making a target of herself, or at least not any bigger a target than she has to be. Andy’s lived her life sustained on scraps of  _ one day, one day, one day _ . One day she won’t depend on her parents anymore. One day she’ll decide for herself which hobbies are worthwhile. One day she’ll be the only one who has to approve of her outfit and hairstyle before she leaves the house. One day she’ll cook her own food and be as vegan as she wants. One day she’ll be gay out loud, in the open. One day she’ll be able to ask herself the question  _ am i a girl or a boy or a third thing _ .

One day no one will own her but herself.

Reaching those milestones, one day by one day, has been the work of her lifetime. She’s still scratching away on bare rock, trying to carve her way to freedom. She’s learned to be very patient. Very quiet. Very small.

Pete, though—Pete’s all about  _ now _ . She’s always had to be the brightest fastest drunkest worst. She’s the least patient person Andy’s ever met.

She’s the most destructive.

Andy’s never hurt anyone, not on purpose. She is painfully aware of her emotional footprint. She can understand, in a way, why Pete wants to break herself—but she can’t forgive the carelessness with which Pete breaks everyone else.

After the show—which totally fucking  _ sucks _ , by the way—Andy finds Pete in the ladies’ room, puking her guts out, fingers curled around the neck of a Stoli bottle. Between rounds of retching Pete swigs vodka from the bottle. Andy wishes she was surprised.

Suddenly Andy goes blackout mad. She seizes the bottle from Pete’s weak hand, rougher than she needs to be. The first words Andy speaks to her since they found her and Garrett in the office are: “What the fuck is wrong with you tonight? Are you  _ trying _ to give yourself alcohol poisoning?”

From inside the toilet bowl, wretched and raw, Pete says, “Obviously yes.”

Andy is so fucking pissed at her. She throws the vodka bottle as hard as she can at the far wall, jumps startled when it shatters. She’s never broken anything on purpose before. The tiny flash of relief she feels is chased by a powerful surge of guilt. She has to clean up that glass before someone hurts themselves.

“That didn’t make me feel better at  _ all _ ,” Andy says.

“Never does,” slurs Pete. She gags on her own words, splashes more stomach acid into the toilet. She is utterly unlovely.

“So why do you do it? Over and over again. Break shit just to see if you can. It’s like you’re so obsessed with destroying yourself, you never think about whether you’re hurting anyone else!” Andy realizes she is yelling and does not try to stop.

“I did it for Pat,” Pete says. Her voice spills rough from a bile-burned throat. “He was a cheating ashole. She needed to see that. Before he broke her heart.”

Andy knows how Pete feels about Garrett. Andy knows how Pete feels about Pat. Andy doesn’t think any of it is a very good excuse for Pete doing whatever the fuck she feels like, just like she always does.

“So you thought you’d break it first?” Andy demands. Pete doesn’t have an answer for that. Andy can hear her crying and doesn’t care at all.

Filled to the seams with Pete’s ugliness, Andy says something cruel. Something true. “I’m so fucking sick of you. I should’ve let you keep your goddamn bottle and turn yourself to poison inside and out.”

“I’m sorry,” Pete whispers, drunk and sick and weeping. Pitiful.

But Andy doesn’t feel pity. Andy’s heart is barren. She aches for what Pete has done to Pat, for the nuke Pete has set off in the center of a band Jo worked so hard to build. Andy searches herself and finds no mercy for Pete at all.

“You know what, Pete?” she says. “I don’t care.”

That night, Jo, Andy, and Pat share the room Garrett paid for. It is a night of crying, shouting, and some kind of unspecified weirdness between Pat and Jo. They sneak into the hotel pool around 3 in the morning, Jo and Pat sharing tiny mini-fridge bottles of booze. It isn’t anything like the last time they were all in a pool together. That feeling of potential, an open horizon, like anything might happen—that feeling is not in attendance. Their early-summer dreams burnt up that fast.

You can probably imagine how awkward it is the next morning, when whichever of their friends took care of Pete last night drop her off. Nobody wants to see her. She has sunglasses on, her hood up. What is visible of her cheeks is very pale. Andy looks away again. Pete climbs into the van. Jo sits on the farthest edge of the bench seat the two share, like whatever’s wrong with Pete might be catching.

No one says anything. Pat starts the engine, hands clawed up on the steering wheel. She turns the radio up very loud.

There’s a whole fucking week left til tour ends. There’s only a week left til tour ends. Til Andy has to find a way to live in her parents’ house. Til they see her shaved hair and all the threats her mother’s been making come true. But it doesn’t matter now. The safe place she found, the home on the road, is already gone.

Andy’s starting to realize she needs to make her own escape. She doesn’t know what it looks like, yet. But she’s starting to understand she can’t count on anyone else’s. Even her friends can only save her so much. At a certain point, she has to rescue herself.

They’ve been driving 30 minutes before Jo breaks the silence. “Pat, take the next exit,” she says.

“No detours today,” Andy protests. She doesn’t want to look at, talk about, or even  _ think _ about anything.

“Whose van? Jo’s van,” Jo says pugnaciously. “The next exit, please, Pat.”

And so they find themselves at something called the Nuclear Waste Adventure Trail and Museum. Pat parks and shuts off the van. They all sit and listen to the engine click.

Finally, Pat sighs and plays along. “So what the hell is this?”

In her best tour guide voice, Jo says, “1.5 billion cubic yards of depleted uranium waste. It sat here, huge and irradiated and abandoned for 20 years, til the Department of Energy decided to drop a bunch of rocks on top of it. Totally surreal, right? They had this toxic problem they didn’t know how to solve, so they just— _ buried it _ . Now there’s a trail and, like, tourist attractions, all built on top of this burning core of nuclear waste.”

Pat interrupts Jo’s patter with a sneering, “Oh, so just like Pete then.”

There’s a long, tense silence. It’s broken by the slam of the door as Pete gets out of the van, walks away.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” says Jo. She slides the van door back open and goes after Pete.

Leaving Pat with Andy.

Pat’s still holding the steering wheel, still staring straight ahead. It takes Andy a while to realize she’s crying.  _ Oh for fuck’s sake _ , thinks Andy. How did she get designated one of the emotionally responsible ones?

But what you do with friends is, you take care of them. She remembers what she said to Pete a few months ago—about deciding what matters more, your friend’s happiness or your own comfort. Crap. Andy feels a wave of guilt for how she talked to Pete last night. No, she doesn’t understand Pete Wentz right now, maybe not ever. But she loves her. The girl’s a fucking mess, she’s a Hadron particle collider causing microscopic explosions with the force to kill stars, but Andy loves her.

Andy really, really hopes Jo stops her from flinging herself off, like, a huge pile of nuclear waste. She’s sure the temptation of the all that juicy symbolism is great.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” Andy asks Pat. “Kind of sick of this van after 19 days in it.”

“I don’t know what I want,” Pat says, all consumptive and wan like a Bronte sister.

Andy reminds herself about friendship and mostly stifles her sigh. “Okay, I get that,” she says gently. “But do you want it in or out of this smelly van?”

Pat laughs a little, even as she’s crying. “Out,” she agrees.

In a few minutes, they stand at the foot of the self-proclaimed Adventure Trail. The sky is grey and tense with clouds. A wide concrete path cuts through a vast field of broken slate that seems to stretch on forever.

“Very post-apocalyptic wasteland,” Pat observes. Her crying seems to have generally decreased.

“Fitting,” Andy jokes.

They set off on the trail.

After a few minutes Pat says, “I don’t know if I want to be in this band anymore.”

Andy nods. “Can’t argue. You guys suck. That’s why I’m not in it.”

“You’re  _ kind _ of in it.”

Andy checks her nonexistent watch. “For, like, six more days. Then I’m leaving and not looking back. Not only do you guys suck, but your personal lives are dumpster fires.”

“Hey!” Pat protests. Andy feels good about making her laugh. “It’s the Pete Wentz area of effect. It’s not my fault.” There’s a long pause, during which the jokey vibe withers. Pat’s voice is serious again when she says, “Garrett really is an asshole, isn’t he? If he’d do that with, like, one of my best friends. When I was right  _ there _ . Like, what has he been doing when I’m  _ not _ there? Oh, fuck.”

Andy chooses not to comment on what Garrett’s probably been doing while Pat’s been away. She just says, “Total asshole. You deserve so much better.”

They walk on, in this strange and endless field of slate, eternally toxic used-up power buried deep beneath their feet. Andy’s sure it’s a metaphor for something.

Pete would know what.

“So if Garrett’s an asshole,” asks Pat, “what does that make Pete?”

Andy swallows a thousand ugly things she might say. Like splinters, each one stings. She says, “You deserve better than her too.”

*

Jo finds Pete feeling sorry for herself in the middle of a nuclear wasteland. This is so fucking typical, it should made Jo roll her eyes. Somehow, though, Jo finds it makes her feel—soft. She’s been pissed at Pete for less than 24 hours and already she’s struggling to maintain it.

The thing is, Pete changed her life. Jo got her first guitar in grade school, used her bat mitzvah money on a half-stack amp. She’s been writing songs and daydreaming of being a rock star since she had braces. When her mom started letting her go to shows (on the condition that she make Bs and stop complaining about Hebrew school), Jo thought that was it—her Icarus moment—she was officially living the dream.

Then she met Pete. Pete with her devil-may-care grin and dyed hair, her torn tees and short skirts and Sanrio backpack and safety pins. Pete who did whatever she wanted and didn’t give a fuck about what people said about her. Pete who didn’t ask permission and didn’t apologize. Pete with the jailhouse tattoos and the thorns inked into her cleavage. Pete who had rules that she shared with Jo freely, rules like, “Never under any circumstances pay for your own drink” and “There’s only one thing I won’t do, and that’s crowdsurf. More groping and slime than swimming in an octopus tank” and “Girl bands do everything dudes do, but harder and in heels.” Pete: older, effortlessly cool, and so obviously talented Jo could see the streaky comet’s tail coming off of her. Everyone who met her just  _ knew _ she would blaze her way to stardom, as long she didn’t burn herself up first.

Jo met Pete, and instead of seeing what Jo was—a kid with bad hair who pretended to be Avril Lavigne at home in her bedroom—Pete saw what Jo  _ could _ be. That is Pete’s gift: seeing the potential in everyone, the hurt and the glory, the success and the sorrow, and coaxing out whatever feels best to her in that moment. Jo met Pete, 15 years old with zero experience being in an actual band, and brought her on tour in place of a much older and more accomplished dude. Pete took her by the hand and showed her: you’re possible. Whatever you want most? You deserve it. You can have it.

After that, it wasn’t just a daydream anymore. After that it became Jo’s life.

So this is the other part of Pete. The messy part, the fucked-up part. The inevitable dark side of the girl’s raw force. How can Jo blame her for that? It’s who Pete’s always been. She’s wildfire. She can light up just as easy as destroy. Jo doesn’t think she always has a choice. Jo doesn’t think there’s much space between illuminating the people around her and immolating herself.

Jo’s always known Pete’s not perfect. And Jo believes—even when it’s difficult—that Pete’s trying to be better.

So she finds Pete out in the radioactive landfill and finds that she’s no longer mad.

Jo plops down in the rocks beside her friend, who’s still in her sour-smelling clothes from last night with massive, bruise-dark circles under her eyes, just visible behind the sunglasses. “Sharps,” Jo says instead of  _ hi _ .

Pete looks at her in dulled-out confusion. Jo sticks out her hand. “ _ Sharps _ ,” she repeats. “Hand ‘em over. Anything you’ve got on your person that you’re thinking about doing something stupid with.”

Pete doesn’t look defensive or offended or resistant to the command. The smallest furrow appears on her brow, like it’s puzzling to her why Jo would care. She doesn’t protest, though. She is so utterly compliant as to crack Jo’s heart all over again. Pete empties her pockets into Jo’s hands, forking over two safety pins, a tiny razor from inside a pencil sharpener, a jagged bit of hard plastic, a lighter, and an especially pointy house key.

Jo tries not to look surprised. “You always travel with this kind of arsenal?” she asks mildly.

Pete shrugs one shoulder and looks away.

“We need to get this band functional enough to play a show tonight. Have any ideas?” Jo keeps her tone light, conversational, like they’re just two girls who started a band and now have to find a way to keep it running.

Jo hasn’t heard Pete say a word since last night, when Andy followed Pat out of the shitty club office, both of them just fucking wrecked with fury. Pete was sprawled out on the desk, disheveled and disgraced, staring blankly at the ceiling like she wasn’t even there, livid bitemarks rising on her neck.

She certainly didn’t look like she’d been enjoying herself. She didn’t even look capable of buttoning her own pants.

There was no right thing to say, so Jo just said, “Are you okay?”

It took Pete a long time to tell the ceiling, “No.”

Jo moved to help her friend—to help her up, to fix her shirt, to offer comfort,  _ something _ . But when her hand landed softly on Pete’s splayed knee, Pete jerked away like Jo would hurt her next. She shot off the desk, banging her head kind of badly on the brick in her haste, and was out the door before Jo could stop her.

She did not, after all, button her pants.

Pete Wentz leaves a large silence. She is usually so much, so loud, as if she can’t quite stop herself from compulsively blurting out everything she’s thinking. Jo is so relieved to hear her speak again.

She says, “Everyone is mad at me.”

Jo thinks this is pretty obvious, not to mention justified, but tries to say it softer than that. “This is so incredibly not about you. You did your part. It’s about Pat now.”

“I just wanted,” Pete says. Her voice is so small. She says nothing else.

“Other people are real too. We’re allowed to have reactions,” Jo says carefully. Sometimes she has to explain to Pete things everyone else already knows. She wonders who was supposed to teach them to Pete in the first place, why she mostly made it to adulthood without understanding them. 

Pete finally meets her eyes as Jo says, “You affect us. You get that, right? We care about you. What you do affects all of us.”

Pete drops her head again, like even behind sunglasses eye contact is too much. She balls her hoodie sleeves in her fists, watches her own hands disappear. “When I fuck up, it’s not about you,” Pete murmurs to her hands. 

“No such luck,” Jo tells her. She eases a hand onto Pete’s shoulder. Pete flinches and goes rigid, but she doesn’t pull away. “We belong to each other, sunshine. Fuck-ups and all.”

They share a nice Moment til Pete ruins it with a huge groan. “Do I really have to get back in that van?”

Jo’s comforting touch turns into a steely, anti-escape hold. “Yes,” she says. “And don’t even  _ think _ about the World’s Largest Frying Pan. I know it’s in Iowa, and we are  _ not stopping _ .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is so important and I owe you all so much. A big, fun supernatural fic coming soon for everyone's Halloween weekend! Consider donating to the [Fic Against Fascism drive](http://ficagainstfascism.wordpress.com/) and hit me up if you're ever in the St Louis area and want to hang out with a terrifying Peterick stan.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which no one quits the band, Pete comes to an uncomfortable realization, Andy can't believe she's just now realizing it, and the girls return to domesticated life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this story more than anything, except you guys. I love you guys most of all.
> 
> Check out the [Girl Out Boy playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/marvelgirl238/playlist/7Ja7oPJdFfVAjnYiAjgvRj)! It grows a little every week because I have no self-control.
> 
> And don't forget the [Fic Against Fascism](http://ficagainstfascism.wordpress.com/) drive is still running! As we draw up on the one-year anniversary of electing an orange game show host as the leader of our country, I think it's more important than ever to keep fighting. Loving yourself and your friends in a world that hates you is an act of resistance, and so is commissioning fanworks through charity donations. Thanks everyone! See you next week!

 

Iowa City and they haven’t spoken yet. Iowa City and Pat won’t even look at her. It’s an experience she can relate to. Pete doesn’t want to look at herself either.

They’re killing time downtown, wandering in and out of pointless shops, because they can’t go to the venue til 5 and they don’t have any money for a hotel or a diner or anywhere to sit, and it’s way too hot to sit in the van. There’s a bodyguard sort of situation going on, where Andy keeps herself between Pat and Pete and Jo keeps herself between Pete and Andy. Pete wonders what they’re expecting to happen. Pete wonders what Pat expects. It’s not like Pete’s going to start a brawl in a fucking Starbucks. She didn’t even want to get out of the van.

“I’ll stay. I want to nap,” she said when they parked.

“It’s 90 degrees and there’s not enough gas to run the AC. Leaving you here would be inhumane. It’s not even legal to leave _dogs_ in cars in weather like this,” Jo informed her.

“Shouldn’t bother _her_ , then,” Pat said venomously at the same time Pete said, “So crack a window.” Both mouths open, words coming out at once: this almost counts as them speaking.

Jo glared at Pete and Pat in turn. “As the only person here who actually cares whether Pete suffocates inside my van, I’m making this call. And I say Pete’s coming with us.”

“Hey,” Andy protested. “I care whether she suffocates. Like, I wouldn’t _prefer_ it.”

“No comment,” Pat said darkly.

So now Jo’s dragging Pete around Iowa City even though everyone, including Pete, wishes she was anywhere else, and at least 50% of them wish she was actively asphyxiating.

The girls browse slowly through a new age shops that sells crystals, incense, and self-help books about fertility. The shop blasts weird pan flute music and incredible AC; they will loiter as long as they can, moving in slow-motion until the shopkeeper becomes suspicious. Pete is eyeing an alarmingly erotic, gender-conflicting incense holder when she hears Pat say to Andy, “So who do we have on bass tonight? Usually I could do it, but without T.J….”

Pete’s pretty sure at this point that Pat will never voluntarily speak to her again. She  wants to say _I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry_ . She wants to say _I wanted to protect you but I did it wrong_ . She wants to say _you are so important to me._ She wants to say _I really fucked up._ She’s gotten a lot of mileage out of that last one.

What she says instead is “Ummm…?”

Pat doesn’t even look at her. Of course she doesn’t. She hasn’t in two days. Since. Pete starts to vibrate with sheer anxiety. She digs her fingernails into her forearm to try and relieve some of the flickering distress. Her own hands are the only sharp things she has left.

Pat says to Andy, as if Andy has said anything at all, voice small and tight, “I’m not getting on stage with her.”

Pat has hit Pete before—physically struck her—over an annoying joke. (About Pat’s terrible music taste. She’s easy to tease.) Cursed her out over an unfavorable nickname. (Pete had been calling her Mrs. Butterworth.) Nearly choked her over a melody vs. lyrics argument. (During which she called Pete a pretentious navel-gazing peacock, the best insult Pete has ever received.)

That Pat is giving her _nothing_ —not even eye contact, not even verbal excoriation, not even explosive physical rage—it’s more terrifying and hurtful than anything else she could do. It’s like Pete doesn’t exist to her anymore. And Pete’s existence was already such a tenuous thing.

Andy doesn’t like her much right now either—she’s said as much—so Pete’s as surprised as anyone when Andy says, “Do you know any other bassist in the state of Iowa? Because I don’t.”

Jo, absent-mindedly fondling a geode, chimes in, “You’re going to have to play together again at some point.”

“Unless I quit this terrible fucking band!” Pat snaps. “Or she does.”

And Pete can’t cower and scamper and scrape a minute longer, really she can’t. She knows she should make herself small, humble, meek—pitiful enough that maybe Pat will one day forgive her, or miserable enough that she can finally make herself say out loud how sorry she obviously is—but as usual, she can’t quite control her mouth.

She turns away from the voluptuous incense holder, cuts swiftly through the gap between two display tables, and is directly in Pat’s path, in Pat’s face, before either of their bodyguards can react. It takes Pete’s breath away like a swift puncture to the lung, being this close to Pat. Even though they’ve been living out of the same cramped van, Pat hasn’t been within six feet of her since—well. Since.

“Are you?” Pete demands. She’s very aware that she’s skipping right past apologies, right into yelling at the person she’s hurt the most, the person she wanted to hurt the least. Yes, this is probably a flawed approach. She hopes she’ll get the chance to fix it later. But right now, words are just—ripping out of her. All her anger and her fear and her hurt, all things meant for herself and not for Pat, they’re bubbling out of her lips, leaving blisters. “Are you quitting this terrible fucking band?”

Pat crosses her arms over her chest. Her face is burning like a traffic signal. Her mouth is shaped in a malevolent sneer. Pete knows she has not suffered nearly enough for Pat. “ _I_ shouldn’t have to quit. _I_ didn’t betray anyone. _I_ didn’t fuck anyone else’s fucking boyfriend. _I’m_ not an enormous scaly dick-breathing slut!”

Smiling is the least appropriate reaction Pete could possibly have in this moment, but her face cracks into an insane, fugue grin anyway. It’s just—that’s the most creative way anyone’s ever called her a whore. Even when she’s yelling at Pete, Pat is a genius. She’s so bright, sharp, smart. Pete loves her. Pete can’t help but love her.

Fuck.

Pete loves her.

“Why are you _smiling_?” Pat’s volume is growing proportionally with her exasperation. The shopkeeper has gone from leery to actively distressed. She’s moving towards them. Soon they will be ejected back into the August heat.

“Because insults like that are why I know you can write better lyrics,” Pete says. “This is why I always say you’re holding out on us.”

“Oh, you don’t want me to hold back anymore, is that it?” Pat’s yelling by now. Her fists are crunched up tight. She’s one wrong word from swinging. They all know it.

Pete’s smiling beatifically, showing all her teeth like her mouth is a carnival game and there’s a prize to be won for knocking them out. She has the notion that if she can just get Pat to punch her, things will start to get better between them. If Pat would just hurt her back, knock her on her ass, they’ll both be on their backs in the rubble. Maybe they can help each other up again. “Pat?” she says, grinning, grinning. “I never want you to hold back. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I hurt you and I’m so fucking sorry—”

 _Impact_.

Pat slugs her in the mouth. She doesn’t fuck around with slapping and hair-pulling; Pete appreciates this about her. When pushed, Patricia Stump is very direct.

Pete staggers back, her grin filling in with red to match the dazzling white. Blood on her teeth, she says, “I’m not quitting my own band.”

“Well I’m not quitting either!” Pat shouts back.

Then the shopkeeper descends on them, spewing threats of law enforcement and lifelong shop bans. They are ushered out into the unrelenting Iowa heat, Jo seizing Pete by the arm and frog-marching her like _she’s_ the one who might spring abruptly into violence.

“What the fuck kind of apology was that?” Jo hisses into her ear as they leave the shop.

Pete’s so miserable, the bloody throb of her mouth so bright, that everything comes out half-laugh, half-lisp. She says, “The Pete Wentz kind, I guess. Do you think it worked?”

  


It didn’t work. Not the first apology; not the second one; not the notebook pages of cringing sorrow Pete churns out and delivers to Pat, slipping them into her pockets and guitar case and backpack and hands.

 _im sorry_ , she texts Pat throughout the day.

 _i dont deserve your forgiveness but i want it_ , she writes on her arm in ballpoint pen, poking Pat til she glances at it.

“I am broken open with sorrow that I hurt you. That’s what I do. I hurt people. I hurt the ones I love the most. I thought I was protecting you and I still believe that but I know I hurt you too,” she whispers to Pat while she is asleep, in case Pete’s contrition can seep into her dreams.

The apologies don’t work. But Pat does get on stage with her. Together, they play out the tour. Their sound is different now: desperate and raw, cracking with ire. Pat’s mouth shapes so hatefully around Pete’s angry lyrics. She delivers them with earnest venom. She spits them like she hates each syllable, the pen they sprang from, the hand that wrote them, the girl attached. Their instruments come together with frenetic violence. Pat lets Pete come near on stage, on stage and nowhere else. Pete takes full advantage.

They play like never before. It is euphoric. The basements and bars don't empty when they start to play. Sometimes people sing along. Almost every night people dance. Sometimes, Pat gets so swept up in the moment, the heat and energy and purity of it all, that she almost, _almost_ , meets eyes with Pete. Then she catches herself; the anger clamps back down; she withdraws to Jo’s corner of the stage to stay. After their lost song, she peels off the stage and vanishes before Pete’s even unhooked from her amp. She makes sure they don't speak.

But god. They've never played like this.

No one talks about what will happen after the tour.

*

She doesn’t know how she ends up in these situations, really she does not, but they’re somewhere in Minnesota when Andy realizes she’s going to apologize to Pete.

“I’m going to ride the rollercoaster til I puke and none of you can stop me!” Jo’s declaiming her plans for what she’ll do at the Mall of America. Beside her in the passenger seat, Pat is listing all the record stores in the Twin Cities and fretting over how many she’ll have time to see. Andy has a list of vegan places where she wants to eat. They’re all excited for some metropolitan excitement after the wind farms and cornfields of Iowa. But Pete—Pete is silent.

For a week now Pete has been silent.

Maybe that sounds peaceful, but it’s not. It’s like the silence after a bomb goes off, the silence in an abandoned Russian town after Chernobyl, the silence at a funeral when no one knows what to say. Andy wanted space from Pete, wanted—if she’s honest—to punish her. But how do you punish someone so committed to punishing herself? And why is punishing her friend supposed to make Andy feel better anyway?

The thing is. Not that she likes to admit it. The thing is, Andy’s always been a little bit jealous of Pete. From the outside, she looks like she has everything. She looks like it’s easy. There’s a lot of mess beneath that effortless shell—Andy’s seen it—but Pete looks so easy all the time, sometimes Andy forgets. Sometimes she reverts back to the person she was in high school, the one who didn’t know any way to lift herself up but on the backs of other broken down girls.

Her original plan is to low-key follow Pete when they get to the mall, wait til she’s alone, and make her move. It’s not creepy; it’s friendship. She figures she’ll catch Pete somewhere discreet and mumble her way through a poorly executed, half-accusatory apology that will leave both of them feeling complicated. (Most of Andy’s interpersonal interactions go like that.) But following Pete proves to be challenging. Jo parks the van and she and Pat peel off excitedly into the belly of the mall, but Pete won’t leave the fucking parking garage. She dawdles beside the van, pretending to inspect the tires. Feeling Andy loom, waiting for her, Pete tells one of the tires, “You go ahead. I’ll catch up in a minute.”

Andy doesn’t for one second believe her. “No you won’t,” she says. Her voice comes out so much crabbier than intended. “You’re gonna skulk in this creepy dark parking garage for the next two hours.”

Startled, Pete meets her eyes and lets out half a laugh. “Um, true,” she admits. “But I might also get Starbucks.”

Coffee, at least, is a language in which they’re both fluent. “I could go for Starbucks,” Andy says. It’s the most passive, cowardly possible way to ask _can I come with you_. It’s the best she can do.

Pete’s plucking and twisting one of the bracelets on her wrist with singular determination. She doesn’t look up. “Cool,” she says without conviction. “Maybe I’ll see you there.”

Suddenly Andy is too exasperated to go on. She stomps over to Pete and grabs her by the arm. Pete’s looking at her now. “You’re my best friend,” Andy blurts out accusatorily. Right on schedule. “I’ve been a dick to you and I’m sorry. Will you let me apologize in a fucking Starbucks? Or do we have to hang out in Rape Central?”

Pete’s lips are curling, but nothing about her eyes suggests a smile. “You aren’t a dick. You’re—you.”

“ _Thanks_.”

“No, I mean—it’s okay. That’s what you do. You protect whoever needs protecting most.”

She has no idea how right she is. Andy lets that process for a moment. Then she says, “Yeah, I do. Only—I don’t know how to protect you from _you_.”

It’s Pete’s turn to process now. She’s forgotten to avoid Andy’s eyes. She blinks into Andy’s face, days-old eyeliner and dark blue circles, looking more exhausted than any 21 year old should. “You don’t have to—” she starts.

“ _I do_ ,” Andy interrupts savagely.

The silence stretches until it simply cannot go on any longer. Pete tips forward, hides her face in Andy’s shoulder. It is the first time she has moved _towards_ someone all week. “Coffee,” Andy says firmly. Pete’s head rocks on her shoulder. Andy leads the way to Starbucks.

 

“So how are you gonna fix it?” Andy asks. Pete is stirring more and more sugar packets into her drip coffee. Neither of them can afford the sickly-sweet confectionary Frappucinos Pete usually orders, and for the first time in the history of their acquaintance, Pete made no attempt to flirt her way into free coffee. Andy has literally never witnessed Pete Wentz pay for her own coffee before today.

“Fix it?” Pete repeats. She gives a small, nihilistic laugh. It makes Andy feel cold to her core. “I can’t _fix it_.”

Andy sips her dark roast, unmoved by Pete’s fraught drama. “And you think that because…?”

“Is it not obvious?” laughs Pete. Andy is really, really not a fan of this bitter little laugh. She thought she’d seen every version of Pete battered and broken. This is new. This is Pete alone in a crowded room, cracking jokes with the hangman about knocking boots. This is Pete falling overboard and throwing back the life preserver. No, Andy doesn’t care for this at all.

“Explain it to me,” Andy prompts.

Pete stares in the dark, sweet whirlpool of her coffee cup. “This is the most massive fuck-up I could fuck up. And I can’t even explain why I did it.”

Andy thinks it’s incredibly obvious why she did it, actually. That’s the whole reason Andy was so pissed. Somehow, she keeps her tone mild as she says, “You can’t?”

Pete’s reply is angry and brittle with overcontrol. “I thought I was—protecting her. Like I had some moral high ground. Like I could take that bullet for her. I just wanted her to see what a shitlord he was. Or at least, I had myself convinced that was what I wanted. But now… after…”

Pete looks up at Andy through her unwashed bangs. “I was never a white knight, you know? Always been the dragon in the fucking tower. I’ve messed around with other people’s boyfriends before. More times than I want to say. Like, good luck hating me even half as much as I hate myself. This is my _thing_ . I’ll do anything with anyone. No low is too low; I was born on my belly; I’m the girl who never learned the word _no_. I’ve hurt… I hurt everyone. Eventually.”

A long, tight pause. Pete’s voice is barely audible when she speaks next. Her eyes are hot and wet. “So why does this suck so much? It turns out there’s a really simple answer to that question, and I—I didn’t see it. Didn’t let myself…”

“You have feelings for Pat.” Impatient, Andy cuts through the wallowing, fills in the blanks with what she’s been telling Pete for months. Ever since Pete found out Pat existed and plummeted instantly into love.

For an emotionally intelligent person, Pete really is very stupid sometimes.

Pete puts her head down on the table and groans. Andy resists the urge to save her.

“Why am I always the last to know,” Pete says into the table. It’s not a question.

Andy answers anyway. “Because you don’t listen to me. Like, case in point: what have I always said about falling for straight girls?”

Pete lifts her face just enough to stare miserably at Andy. “What the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“Don’t do it. Is what I always say. In case you wanted to start listening,” says Andy. She’s not going to lie. “All of your options are pretty terrible. But like. Not that you deserve to be forgiven? But your apology is gonna have to be a _lot_ better than getting punched in a candle store.”

Pete lifts her head a little more, takes her first sip of the sugar-sludge she’s created. “Andy?”

“Yeah?”

“You know how the tour’s ending in a few days?”

“Yeah.”

“I understand if you don’t want to, like, be around me right now, or ever? But. In case you don’t want to go home. I just want you to know you’re always welcome anywhere I am.”

Andy opens her mouth to respond and finds her throat is suddenly tight and non-cooperative. She swallows, hard, and takes a too-big sip of coffee. She can’t quite meet her friend’s eyes as she says, “Thanks, Pete.”

*

It would be easier to hate her if Pete stopped apologizing.

She hasn’t explained herself—why it happened, what she was thinking, what the fuck she was hoping to accomplish. Are they a _thing_ now? When Pete’s buried in her phone, is it him she’s texting? Is it like Garrett said and she attacked him? Or—Pat’s stomach has been uneasy all week with the thought of it—is it the other way around?

But no. She wishes she could think of Pete as innocent, but finally she knows better. She used to think of her friends as all one thing, lit-up and brilliant and impossibly cool, the best thing that ever happened to her. She used to think of Pete as a role model. She had Pete pasted to her bedroom wall. Pat wanted to _be_ her.

Pat doesn’t know what she wants from Pete anymore.

(Is it the same thing Jo’s getting?)

What Pat does know is it’s complicated. People are complicated. You can try to hold them up in your mind, but they’ll always disappoint you. No flesh-and-blood girl can ever be as good as the one you imagined. Nobody’s just one thing.

So here they are, their last night on tour, flat broke and staying in one of Andy’s bandmates’ houses. Pat’s ears are still ringing from the amps and the crowd at their Milwaukee show.  Tomorrow they drive to Chicago, play one last time, and separate after almost a month of virtually no privacy. Tomorrow Pat will sleep alone. She’s almost forgotten what it’s like, sleeping without Jo’s snores in her ear or Pete’s knees in her back. They should be out celebrating tonight, probably. They did it! They actually fucking did it. They toured the tour. It should be joyous, wild, bittersweet. Instead they’re in pajamas before midnight. Pat doesn’t know what it is.

She’s curled up on the floor with Jo, who she still feels confusing about. All the questions she’s not asking about Jo-and-Pete are acrid on her tongue. Here in this nest of unwashed sleeping bags and girls she’s poured her whole heart into, exhausted and achey and chronically dirty beyond what a shower can address, at the very end of this amazing tour, this most incredible thing she’s ever done in her life—here, tonight, she doesn’t miss Garrett at all.

The TV plays a Buffy rerun, filling the room with muted light and sound. Pat’s absently picking at the last flakes of her ragged nail polish when Pete’s bare, skinny legs appear beside her head.

Pat looks up with caution. Pete’s wearing a giant Che Guevara t-shirt and nothing else. Her legs are still wet and soft from her shower. Her golden skin emanates the faintest residual heat. Against her will, it makes Pat warm.

Pete’s holding out the nail polish she’s been using on Pat all tour. Pat doesn’t paint her nails, as a rule; but she lets Pete do it for her. “Why do you get black and I get robin’s egg bullshit?” Pat asked the first time Pete produced this bottle for her.

Pete’s eyes were wide and gleaming. “This is _your_ color, Baby Blue. I bought it specifically for you. It’s gonna look so nice with your skin. Your eyes. Your guitar!”

And it did.

Now Pete’s standing there with the bottle thrust out. She won’t quite look at Pat. “It’s yours anyway,” she says to the corner of the room.

“I’ll only make a mess,” Pat says, not taking it.

Pete glances at her sideways. Her face is so unguarded, so almost-hopeful—her lips still just slightly swollen from Pat’s fist—that Pat feels it, deep and hot and unwanted in her breast.

“Do you want me to…?” Pete asks, her voice barely above a whisper.

It is too much. Pat looks away, suddenly angry. She scrapes a huge flake of polish off her thumb with brutality. She doesn’t say anything.

Pete sets the polish down beside her before she goes. Pat lets her, because she knows if she opens her mouth, she will say _yes_.

*

They finish off the tour at the Knights of Columbus hall in Arlington Heights. Like any home game, it’s well attended and enchantment-charged. Whatever loyalists and die-hards they have, Chris and Charli and kids from the scene and bands they’ve played with and even some kids from school, they all turn up ready to scream along and jump til they bring the house down.

Out back, before they go on, they each buzz with a separate anticipation. Andy with trepidation for the rest of her summer, Pete with a sharp and soaring sort of dirty hope, Pat with the throat-squeezing fear that occupies her before shows. For Jo, it is pride. No matter what happened on the road, the four of them made it through, start to finish. Sure, over half their shows fell through. More than one punch was thrown. They lost at least one fifth of their band membership, and once they release Andy back to her own projects, it’ll just be Jo and two girls who aren’t speaking to each other. Even if this band survives past midnight, it will never be the same again: this summer pilgrimage of four broke girls in a beat-up van, figuring out who they are and how they fit together. Still, organizing and executing this tour—managing this band, _her_ band—it is the most important thing Jo has ever accomplished. It can fall apart after tonight if it has to. She just wants this one perfect show, ending punctuation on her very best dream.

Jo rounds up the gang for the ceremonial pre-show high five that ascended to sacrosanct tradition and then plummeted to abandoned, profane rite over the course of the last three and a half weeks. Tonight, Pat doesn’t resist the contact with Pete. Even Pete seems slightly less morose, saying with a spiked grin, “Perfect new band name, ladies: Patty Stump and the Inflatable Fuck Yous.”

Jo is so moved by the implication that their band might still have a future she can’t respond. Luckily her friends have her covered: “I love it,” Andy declares at the same time Pat says, “Under no circumstances.”

“The four of us, one last time, as Fall Out Boy,” Jo says. They all press hands, lingering with the moment. Everyone wears their nerves on their faces. Then there’s nothing left to stall for; all too soon, the end begins.

Fall Out Boy takes the stage.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which snacks are eaten, Morrissey is sorry, Jo gets mad, and Andy isn't there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come to St Louis and be in a sad girl club with me please! Until then, listen to these sweet tunes.

 

August and empty. Pat sprawls on her mother’s couch, focusing on not letting any of her limbs touch each other. Time stretches. She’s not excited about anything. The earth spins relentlessly onward. School starts soon.

In the time since she stopped being friends with Pete Wentz, not even one interesting thing has happened to her. She doesn’t have a boyfriend. She doesn’t have a band. She writes fast, angry three-chord riffs and tries not to imagine how Pete’s lyrics would fit into them. She does not open any of the huge, bloated Word docs of Pete’s stream of consciousness poetry she keeps getting in her email.

She watches a lot of Dawson’s Creek.

She ignores her phone.

 

Eventually the worst happens, which is: Pat’s mom notices she exists. Specifically, Pat’s mom notices that her sad hermit daughter seems even more like a sad hermit than usual. She perches on the edge of the couch, infringing on Pat’s depression slump, and talks right over Pacey, who is making an emotional speech. Pat finds this very rude.

“Pat, honey? How are you doing?” her mom asks.

Pat groans. “Mom, I’m watching this.”

“Just like you’ve been doing for the last few weeks. Yes, I know,” her mom pushes. “And now I’m asking if you’re okay. Did something… happen on tour with your friends?”

Pat would actually rather electrocute herself than answer that question. _Everything_ happened on tour. She doesn’t want her mom to know about any of it. “I mean, me and Garrett broke up. I told you that,” Pat says. She can hear how defensive she sounds, doesn’t know how to make her voice come out any different.

“Sweetie, do you think you’re depressed?”

Pat drops her head back over the couch, stares at the ceiling, and sighs massively. “I’m not _depressed_ . I’m _relaxing_ . Or at least, I was. I’m depressed _now_ , because of this conversation.”

“You haven’t gone out for a show or anything all month! I have a right to be concerned.”

“I was just at a billion shows, Mom. I’m _tired_.”

“I haven’t seen you go out with Pete or Jo in a while either,” her mom persists. “That’s unusual. Since you met these new girls, you’ve been so busy. You’ve seemed so happy. I think your self-esteem has been improving.”

“Mom!”

“And now you’re back to moping around the house, eating Cheez-Its and avoiding the sun. This is your _senior year_ , Pat. Don’t you want to enjoy it?”

Pat is made of bristles. She wishes she was a porcupine, could damage other people with the intensity of her bad mood. The last thing she wants is her _mother_ asking questions about Pete. There are so many things about Pat’s life she couldn’t even begin to explain, to herself or anyone. “I’m having a fucking blast, Mom,” she blurts out before she can censor herself.

Pat’s mom gets to her feet, her mouth a thin, pissed-off rectangle. “ _Language_ , young lady,” she bites out. She picks up the remote control and turns off the TV with finality. “Since you’re doing just fine, it won’t be any trouble for you to do some dishes before you go back to fusing with the upholstery. And Patricia? I don’t want to buy you all new jeans again this year, so ease up on the Cheez-Its.”

 

Pat’s standing in front of her mirrored closet doors in her underwear, frowning. She’s been alternating between poking her belly and vowing to diet til school starts and forgetting and eating Twizzlers all afternoon.

At first, she thinks the music is some asshole with their car stereo turned up too loud. It takes her a bit to process that it’s not getting quieter, not moving further away. It takes her a bit longer to process that she can’t hear any car sounds. A few seconds more on the strangeness of choosing Suedehead as a song to Jam Loudly To. Finally Pat realizes what’s happening and runs to her window.

Pete Wentz stands in her lawn with her Sidekick held above her head. “ _I’m so sorry_ , _I’m so sorry,_ ” croons Morrissey.

Pat wrenches open the window to her basement bedroom and, without ceremony, breaks the weeks-long silence by shouting at Pete’s sneakers, “My room’s down here, idiot!”

Pete drops to her knees in torn-up jeans. She’s wearing a Babes in Toyland shirt under a black half-hoodie covered in silver stars. She peers into Pat’s window. “Oh. Hi. I guess I’ve never been to your bedroom,” she says.

“ _Why do you come here when you know it makes  things hard for me? I’m so very sickened,_ ” says Morrissey.

“I should be playing this song at you,” Pat points out. “This is actually—a pretty shitty apology song.”

“What, you’re too good for Morrissey now? You’re not even wearing a shirt,” Pete shoots back.

Mimicking Pete’s movement from a moment ago, Pat drops to her knees, hiding herself from the window. She was so caught up in the moment—in the sight of the best friend she hasn’t seen in weeks—in yelling at Pete for being an idiot—she completely forgot she didn’t have _clothes on_.

Pete’s above her, casually removing the screen from her window. “It’s not a big deal,” Pete says as the screen pops free. “I’ve seen you in your underwear loads of times. But, um—this might be less awkward if you put on pants?”

Pat scrambles into the nearest articles of clothing: men’s pajama pants with the Doritos logo printed on them and, fuck, an Arma Angelus shirt. She clamps her arms across her chest in futile effort to hide the band name.

“Can I come in?” Pete asks while she’s already lowered herself halfway into Pat’s room. She drops through the windowsill and lands on Pat’s floor even as Pat says, “No.”

“I wasn’t wearing this shirt,” Pat blurts out stupidly. “It isn’t even mine. I think it’s Andy’s. It got mixed up in my tour stuff.”

Pete surveys the sight, half her mouth in this fanged little smile, half strained as if in pain. Morrissey croons on in the background. “It’s my shirt,” she says. “I put it in your bag.”

Pat looks down at the t-shirt on her body. It’s a little snug. She feels instantly complicated about the cotton on her skin, if Pete’s sweated and screamed and slept and whatever else in it. Pat’s wanted an Arma shirt since she was 15. Pat doesn’t want anything from Pete. And: there’s a lot Pat wants from Pete.

“Why would you do that?” Pat asks. It’s not the most important question to ask right now, probably isn’t even in the top ten, but it’s what comes out of her mouth.

Pete’s expression doesn’t change. “I wanted you to have something that was mine,” she says, shrugging one shoulder.

Pete takes a tentative step towards her. Pat takes an equal, opposite step back. She moved into the basement a few years ago, when she got serious about drumming and wanted to be able to practice without making her whole family crabby. Now that she’s down here alone with home intruder Pete Wentz, it seems way too far from everyone else’s bedroom to be a good idea. Who knew the screen just popped out like that? The illusions of safety provided by four walls and a front door are shattered. A house is no safer than a van in the middle of a cornfield. She could get murdered _anywhere._

Pete makes a small, unhappy sound. Her phone starts playing I Don’t Believe in The Sun next.

“Is this a whole, like, apology playlist?” Pat asks. Her voice comes out so angry. Of course it does. That’s what she is.

“Um, yeah. In case you made me stand out there for a while. I didn’t want to just play the same song over and over again.”

Pat steels herself with the memory of what it felt like, walking in and trying to make sense of the sight of Pete spread on a desk with Garrett’s hands under her clothes. She feels all her skin harden like armor. Not even loneliness will make her yield.

“This isn’t a John Cusack movie, Pete,” Pat snaps. “You can’t just show up with a playlist and expect everything to be okay.”

“What if it’s a really good playlist?” Pete asks. Her voice is small. She jabs at her phone with her thumb, cutting off The Magnetic Fields in the middle of the line _the only sun I ever knew was the beautiful one that was you_.

Then they’re in silence.

Pete covers her face with her hands.  Her chest and shoulders heave with slow, deliberate breaths. When she looks at Pat again, she looks serious, grim. “Okay,” she says. “Thank you for putting pants on. That makes this… easier. I, um. I didn’t just come here to play some songs outside your window or apologize for the 30th time. I came to explain.”

Pat sits down on her bed without meaning to. Her stomach is getting all knotted. Probably from Twizzlers. She doesn’t want to be having this conversation. She wants to pretend nothing ever happened. She wants to never see Pete again.

Pete stands before her and says, “I thought your boyfriend was an asshole and I wanted you to think so too, so I made a move on him. I meant for you to find us. I—I told myself I was protecting you. From him, right? When really who you needed protecting from was me. Um, I didn’t realize this part at the time—I really don’t want you to think it was a big, sleazy scheme—but I’ve been. Obviously I’ve been reflecting a lot, like, _how could I do this to the most important person in my life, why did I, and how can I get her to talk to me again_ —and one of the things that’s become clear to me. That was clear to like, everyone else in the world, probably, before it was to me—”

Pat can hardly open her mouth to breathe. It’s a miracle that she gets out the words, “What are you trying to say, Pete?”

Pete’s eyes keep flicking down to her own hands, where her pink polished fingernails are tearing ferociously at her scabby cuticles, as if she has to force herself to make eye contact with Pat. Pat wants very much to grab Pete’s hands and still them, to protest _you’re hurting yourself_. Both of them make themselves do the hard thing: Pete meets her eyes. Pat doesn’t take her hands.

Neither of them is prepared when Pete says, “I think the reason I had such a problem with you being with Garrett is because I wanted you to be with me.”

Reality skips, shudders, stops. It’s like a film strip burning up in the projector, the whole spool snapping wild and free, the plot sheared off, the pieces lost. Pat can’t breathe or blink or speak. She can’t process. She can’t react.

Pete shows her teeth now, smiling like plastic. Her fingertips work that much faster to undo her skin. “It sounds like the worst thing, when I say it out loud,” she says. “I promise I wasn’t, like— _preying_ on you. I—fuck—I know you aren’t even 18. I’m not expecting anything. I just—you deserve to hear the truth. Even if it’s not easy for me to say. I didn’t plan to fall in love with you, Pat. I—fuck.”

Pete looks down again, swipes at her leaking eyes with her hoodie sleeve. She stops picking her hands, as if only just now realizing what she’s been doing, and turns her hands slowly to study her blood-spotted manicure. “I’d take it back if I could. I’m so fucking sorry,” she says softly.

Pat has no idea what the hell she’s supposed to say. She can’t even tell what she’s feeling, other than like she’s just been hit by an atom bomb.

So that’s how Pete feels about her. She does not ask herself how she feels about Pete. Instead, she thinks about their relationship. The constant, causal touching, the feeling of being perfectly in sync, the way their thoughts run together until they’re just two weirdly separate bodies for the same sparking brain. The feeling of safety and the bitter arguments and the way the whole universe rolls out like a red carpet just for them when they’re writing a song and it’s going well. The way the smell and feel and sound of Pete has come to mean _completeness_ , _comfort, home_ . Pete’s poems and Pete’s stars and falling asleep curled together on the floor of a van and snaking through dark clubs holding hands. The way Pete looked in the pool, lit up like glazed porcelain by the underwater lights. The way Pete looks all the time, and the way Pat doesn’t let herself notice that she’s noticing. The way Pete drives her crazy, makes her madder than anyone, is the most obnoxious person who exists. The way Pete makes her feel special and brilliant and more incredible than any other human who ever lived. The way Pete makes her feel like she’s a forest fire caught up in skin. The way Pete crushes her lips against Pat’s neck on stage. The way offstage Pete will kiss anyone, everyone, except Pat. The way Pat always wanted to be just like Pete before she ever met her and then even stronger ever since. The way wanting to _be_ Pete and just plain _wanting_ Pete are not, after all, so different.

She thinks about how Pete showed her _herself_ . The musician she could be. The _woman_ she could be.

She thinks about what Pete did to her, and what Pete’s done for her. She balances the scales.

At last, Pat looks at Pete and says, “Okay.”

“Okay?” Pete repeats. Her face is broken-open misery. Her hands are pinpricked with tiny speckles of blood. Pat doesn’t know how to fix any of it, any more than she’d know how to with her bare hands seal up the tears in Pete’s skin.

Pat shrugs. “You said you weren’t expecting anything,” she says. “You apologized. I said—okay.”

“Okay like… you forgive me?”

Pat shakes her head. “Okay like… I heard you. Okay like I want to forgive you but I’m not quite there. Okay like, apology received, processed, and accepted, so please stop punishing yourself now. Okay like I’m still allowed to be mad at you. Okay like I really miss you and I want to be friends.”

Pete nods her head up and down, the perfect inverse of Pat’s gesture. She squints into Pat’s eyes, as if assessing whether Pat really means it. As if making sure. She says, “Okay.”

Pete  hovers wretchedly, not sure what Pat’s receipt of her apology gets her. Not sure what she’s allowed to do.

Pat isn’t sure either. Still, she pats the bed beside her. “Sit?”

Pete crosses Pat’s room and sits cautiously on the bed. She moves slowly, tentatively, shrinkingly—as if she expects Pat to stop her at any moment. This time, Pat doesn’t move away. Pete settles far from her, well out of the range of accidental touches; Pat’s spent enough time on a bus with Pete that she knows this is a gross exaggeration of Pete’s idea of personal space. Because she feels someone should, Pat reaches across no man’s land and brushes Pete’s shoulder with her hand. She says, “I kinda want to hear the rest of this playlist. If you can stay?”

Pete’s voice is tight with gratitude. She presses back into Pat’s touch. “I can stay.”

*

Jo’s favorite girl metal band is playing in Chicago and she’s not going alone, no matter how many phone calls Pat ignores. It’s the end of August; school starts next week. It’s a _girl band_. Pat is just going to have to get over herself and come along.

Actually, Pat puts up less of a fight than Jo was expecting. She opens her front door, sees Jo, and asks, “Band practice?”

Jo pauses. “Wait, are you willing to do that again? Because I have ideas about drummers if Fall Out Boy is still a thing.”

Pat nods shyly. “Yeah, it’s a thing. I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring you. It’s… complicated. I’m complicated about it. But I’ll go to practice.”

“Even with Pete there?”

“Yeah. We’re making up, kind of. I think. I haven’t forgiven her or anything,” Pat says confusingly.

Jo is so excited, she doesn't need to understand. After weeks of living cramped up together _intimately_ , with unwashed clothes and overgrown armpit hair and terrible-smelling everything, then going weeks without even seeing each other, it’s hard to tell if touching Pat or not touching her feels more alien. Jo pulls Pat into a crushing hug either way. “Put on your Docs,” she says. “Practice can wait. We’re going to a show.”

 

“I feel like I could do literally anything right now!” Jo shouts to her friend over the noise of the crowd and the headlining band. Jo was really only here for the openers. She can hear the metalhead dudes screaming just fine from the bar, thanks. It was so tight and packed and full of energy, up at the barrier for the first and second acts. The women on stage wore boas of fake flowers and screamed about death and god and patriarchy. Everyone screamed back, even when they didn’t know the words; everyone jumped like it was involuntarily, like they couldn’t have kept their feet on the ground if they’d wanted to. The vibe was insane. After a long string of their own, often lackluster, shows, it is good to have been in the pit with a bunch of kids losing their minds again. It makes Jo surer than ever that this is what she wants to do: make music. Find the art. Make the crowd cry and scream and dance harder than demon possession. Do it all in heels. Do it better than any guy. Do it flawless.

She can feel her nerve endings spark, her grin electric. Random men keep trying to buy her drinks. Even if she wanted to take anything from these dudes, she’s going home to her parents tonight, and Dr. Mom is a BAC bloodhound. Jo declines.

“That kicked so much ass,” Pat agrees. Her cheeks are rosy with gin and tonics of which Jo has lost count.  Pat’s not such a drinker, usually; Jo has an unattractive theory that tonight’s heightened alcohol consumption has something to do with what’s happening between her and Pete. It seems like she's having a hard time being around Jo, even. Jo tries not to be hurt by this.

“You definitely can’t quit our band now. We’ve gotta rise in the scene, support girl musicians everywhere—otherwise we’ll never eradicate all men!” Jo crows in her friend’s ear. Pat laughs, choking on her drink.

“I swear I’m not gonna abandon you just ‘cuz Pete’s a… whatever she is,” Pat yells back. She’s getting a little sloppy. Pat takes a bracing gulp, like what’s coming next is difficult. “But can I ask you something?”

Jo squeezes Pat’s hand, nods. It’s loud in here. Nonverbals are more efficient.

“How did you know you were into girls?”

Jo misheard. She must have. Because it’s so loud. “What? No. What?”

Pat puts her mouth closer to Jo’s ear, her whole face magenta with embarrassment. “HOW DID YOU KNOW YOU WANTED TO HAVE SEX WITH GIRLS,” Pat belts.

Of course the song ends right as she starts, leaving a quiet lull; of course the 20 nearest people overhear. Of course Jo’s blushing so hard she’s about to combust.

“Um?” Jo says, confused, embarrassed. “I don’t?”

But Pat’s shaking her head. “I know already,” she’s saying. “Maybe for a long time I’ve known. You can just—trust me with this, okay? I want—I just need to know how you knew.”

It is possible that Jo has never been as confused in her life. She just looks at Pat in bewilderment as Pat looks more and more rejected and hurt.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jo says helplessly. “Men are useless, but—what can you do? My life’s a heterosexual tragedy.”

Pat’s hurt is starting to bleed visibly into anger. She stamps her foot. “I know about you and Pete!” she yells, just way, way too loudly. They _know_ people at this show. People who can _hear them_. “Garrett already told me!”

Jo can feel her mouth fall open. She’s utterly speechless. She plucks Pat’s glass from her hand and knocks back the tangy pine in a single go. Fuck. She needs a drink after all. Where’s a lechy straight dude when you actually need one?

 

Two minutes later Jo and Pat are facing off outside the venue. Each has her arms crossed over her chest. Each is pink-faced and pissed as hell. Jo is fixated on this idea that Pat hasn’t been answering her phone calls for _weeks_ , has just fucking walked away from the band and their friendship in a fit of pique, like maybe her and Jo were never friends at all and it was always just about the band, and now—now here they are, hanging out for the first time in weeks—and _this_ is what she gets? _Really_?

“Why you would believe _anything_ Garrett said to you at this point—”

“He told the truth about what happened with Pete! Why would he lie about _this_?”

“Why would _he_ lie? Why would _I_ lie, Patricia?”

“I don’t fucking know! To spare my feelings, or—”

“Oh, I’m supposed to care about _your_ feelings right now? What feelings are those, exactly?”

Pat abruptly falls silent. Jo’s shout rings off the dumpsters and chain link of this glamorous alley. Pat’s mouth draws into a thin, tight line. She has no idea that she looks like her mother.

“So you’re saying you and Pete have _never_ , not even once—”

But Jo’s angry now. Or: maybe she’s been angry all night, and this is a good reason to show it. When has she ever given Pat reason to distrust her? She’s put up with a lot, _a lot_ of bullshit this last year. She’s let Garrett talk to her in ways she would never tolerate from anyone else, and not because she gave a fuck about _him_ . She’s coaxed tempers and flattered egos and generally busted her ass to keep this band together without anyone else’s help, they haven’t even _bothered_ to play nice with each other to help out. She’s been cheerfully ignored by a girl she counted among her closest friends for weeks, brought her to a show without asking questions or demanding explanation, happy to pick things back up where they left off, and now she's getting _yelled at?_ This. _This_ is way too fucking much.

“Why are you so interested all of a sudden who Pete fucks?” she snarls. Pat got her started with the shouting. Well, congrats. Now Jo’s ready to fight.

Pat’s voice is quiet and brutal and choked as she says, “I’m just—trying to figure something out.”

“Well I don’t _keep things_ from you, Patricia,” Jo snaps pointedly. “If I was in gay love with Pete Wentz I would fucking tell you.”

Pat bites her lips and drops her eyes. The fight slumps out of her shoulders and jaw all at once. “Shit,” she mumbles to herself.

Jo sounds angry instead of comforting as she asks, “So _is_ there? Something you want to tell me?”

Pat shakes her head, plainly miserable.

Jo—tonight, Jo just doesn’t have it in her to care. She slams back into the bar, biting out, “ _Fine_.”

She leaves Pat behind.

 

They make it all the way to Pat’s driveway in stony silence before Pat breaks it. “I’m so sorry,” she blurts out.

Jo puts her car carefully into park before looking at Pat. She’s tired, mostly. She’s drained from the concert, wired and weary at once. She doesn’t want the summer to end. Things are a mess and she doesn’t want to be the one to fix them. “Yeah?” she says.

Pat’s eyes are bright with tears. Fuck. She nods wordlessly.

Jo undoes her seatbelt and pulls Pat into a crushing hug, just as she did earlier this afternoon on Pat’s doorstep. “You are so pathetic,” Jo tells her friend, laughing softly. “I can’t even be mad at you. Do you know how unfair that is?”

“I’ll try to be less pathetic,” Pat laughs back, her voice watery with unshed sorrow.

“I would appreciate that,” Jo says. She rubs Pat’s back, rests her head against Pat’s. “You know we can hang out even if we’re not doing the band, right? I miss you.”

“I didn’t know if we were at that friend-level,” says Pat.

Jo starts laughing again. “You enormous dork. Welcome to level 16 friendship. New abilities include Non-Band Hangouts and Confessing Your Feelings and Answering Your Phone. Rewards: 60 gold pieces and one arcane friendship talisman.”

“Now it’s official,” Pat says.

“So call me, okay?” Jo presses.

“I will.” Pat’s voice is still so shaky. Jo can’t tell whether she means it.

*

trohwoman91 (08:23:17) : u need to have a queer heart 2 heart w pat

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (08:26:01) : nothing about that sounds good

trohwoman91 (08:26:39) : sry, comes w the gay ambassador title

XxhairmetalmademegayxX (08:28:13) : i cant really talk rn

trohwoman91 (08:28:58) : is everything ok?

_XxhairmetalmademegayxX is offline._


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which black eyes are awarded judiciously, Jo applies to colleges, and Pete pours her heart out onto so. many. pages.
> 
> BONUS: sneaky Krewella lyrics of empowerment buried within!
> 
> As usual, enjoy the [Girl Out Boy playlist!](https://open.spotify.com/user/marvelgirl238/playlist/7Ja7oPJdFfVAjnYiAjgvRj)

 

“Do you know the very first person I saw, when I got to school?” Pat’s asking, tightening the strap so her guitar hangs right. Her eyes are bright with wildness, like all the world’s a punchline. “Fucking _Garrett_. Like, not enough that he ruined my summer, right? I have to come face-to-face with him first thing. Really set the tone for the school year.”

Beside her, Pete has gone dreadful still. Jo notices how pointedly Pat does not notice. Instead, she twists a tuning peg and goes on animatedly, “But you know what? He looked _terrible_. I think he had a black eye. I didn’t feel… anything.”

Jo and Pete share a look. Jo works to keep her face perfectly blank. She bites the insides of her lips to keep from grinning. “I wish I could say I just walked past him like I was Queen fucking Elizabeth. But I kind of—hid? Instead? Until he left. I was late to first period. I didn’t even make it in the front door.”

“Want to start riding to school with me? Then we can breeze past him like fucking _kings_ ,” Jo offers. She is trying to respond to this situation seriously.

“Sorry,” Pete croaks. Jo can tell how close she is to losing it. “But. Did you say he had—a black eye?”

“Yeah?” says Pat.

“Wonder how he got it,” Jo manages.

Then she and Pete both fall the fuck apart laughing.

 

Okay, so the story they don’t tell Pat goes like this:

Last week, Pete and Jo were at the mall. “For back-to-school combat boots,” said Jo. “And lipstick that’s pink.” There is no better person for this shopping list than Pete, was Jo’s thinking.

Then they ran into Garrett.

He just looked so—so _smarmy_. He marched across the food court to put himself between Pete and Auntie Anne’s, an insane decision for anyone. It took Jo a minute to even process his obnoxious face, put in into context; then her heart quickened and her gut tightened and she flashed back to the last time she saw him, jerking up off of Pete’s body like he’d just fucking savaged her. She threw an arm across Pete’s chest like a seatbelt, like she could shield Pete from impact.

But of course Pete saw Garrett too. He was right in front of them. Jo couldn’t throw up an arm and protect her from her entire past. From the gallery of car wrecks that make up Pete’s history. So she felt Pete go still, saw Pete’s face contort, and knew there was nothing that could protect any of them from the impact that was coming.

“Hey, Pete,” said Garrett. Jo edged more of her body between the two, like, if you want her you have to go through me first. Her blood roared in her own ears like the ocean. “You cost me my girlfriend and then don’t even return my calls? You’re being a real bitch.”

“How did you even get my number?” Pete asked. She sounded calm, so calm. Jo slid her hands down so they rested one around each of Pete’s wrists, holding them in place. Her back was snug against Pete’s front. She made a perfect wall. Jo was so prepared to hold Pete back if it should come to blows. Because who could look at Garrett and _not_ be moved to violence?

“The entire Chicagoland area has your phone number,” Garrett sneered. “It’s written above every urinal from here to Wisconsin.”

“What do you _want_ , Garrett,” Jo asked through gritted teeth. She hated him, she _hated_ him. There was a chocolate milkshake stain across the backseat of her van and she hated him.

Garrett raised one arm, tried to jab a finger into Pete’s shoulder, stabbed Jo instead when she dodged to intercept. Jo knew only one thing with certainty: if he fucking touched Pete, she would literally kill him. “I want her to fix the mess she made,” he spat. “I had a girlfriend and now I don’t. Get Pat to call me or do it yourself.”

Jo was so focused on her mission of protecting Pete, she forgot to watch herself. If she’d been looking, she’d have seen herself go molten like the inside of a volcano. Somehow, though Jo was ratcheting up the ranks of the Volcanic Explosivity Index, Pete’s voice was calm. “Pat’s not talking to me either, Garrett,” Pete said. Her skin was cool under Jo’s hands, smooth and untouched as her voice. Jo knows Pete, knows what she’s lived through. Pete as a person should be pocked, riddled, _ruined_ with impact craters. But she was cool and she was smooth and she said,  “I have never wanted anything from anyone less than I want anything to do with you.”

Garrett looked shocked, and entitled, and like no one had ever told him _no_ in his life. Like he’d never listened to any girl who had. He looked like the asshole who told her friend not to eat, like the long gross tongue who interrupted her band practices, like the dickbag who called her band _little_ and _small_. Looking at him made Jo feel like a giant. Like she was bigger than a monster, louder than his bullshit. Like she wanted to be bigger and louder than that.

Then Garrett said, “Why don’t you take a break from fucking everyone else and go _fuck yourself_ , Wentz,” and Jo just.

Jo just.

Jo slapped him across the face with every ounce of her strength. His head snapped with the force of the blow and she came back with the other side of her hand, hitting higher this time, crosshatching his eyebrow and the soft meat of his eye, feeling her pointed crown ring catch and tear til something fleshily, horribly _gave_.

Garrett’s face was bleeding when he staggered back, howling in pain. The red welt of her handprint was already rising like a scarlet letter, A for Asshole, and Jo felt an untameable surge of pride.

Jo understood why Pete and Pat seemed to solve so many problems fist-first. It was more to the point, wasn’t it, than using words?

Felt better too.

Jo showed her teeth to Garrett, snapping furious, carnivorous triumph in his face. He recoiled. She _scared_ him. Jo heard herself yelling: “I will tear your fucking throat out if you come near my friends again! Do you hear me? I will _eat you alive!_ ”

Shortly thereafter Jo was escorted off the premises by mall security. Pete couldn’t believe what she had done. “I was so proud of myself for rising above the temptation to hit him,” she kept saying. “I thought, this is it. This is maturity. I am experiencing personal growth. I am not just lashing out to destroy whatever causes me pain, whether it’s myself or something else. But _damn_ , Jo. Who knew you were a stone _badass_.”

Jo has been banned from Woodfield Mall for life. She was threatened heartily with arrest, informed that 17 year olds can be tried as adults in the Illinois criminal courts. There was the ritual calling of parents, a mild grounding, and many heaps of maternal suspicion. Plus her hand _killed_.

But it’s all worth it, isn’t it? Because: turns out Garrett has a black eye.

 

The find drummers and they play shows. There is a buzz around the band that Jo can’t quantify. The bars they’re playing start filling up past capacity. She is staying out too late on school nights. She is always tired. There is no need to wear eyeshadow: her eyes are dark and lined by punk rock life.

Even with everything?

It feels amazing.

In September, she’s visiting Loyola University with her mom. They’re walking across the campus, sharing sneaky eyerolls while the Jesuit priest leading the tour drones on and on, when a girl walks past in studded pink jeans and a Fall Out Boy t-shirt.

Jo stops so short her mother collides with her back. “Did you see that girl?” Jo hisses, grabbing her mom’s arm.

“Which girl?” Jo’s mom asks distractedly.

“ _The one in a shirt with my band’s name on it_ ,” says Jo urgently.

Mrs. Trohman blinks. “I didn’t know you had shirts.”

“ _We don’t_.”

Mrs. Trohman spins Jo around and shoves her after the girl’s receding back. “You’d better go talk to her, then!”

Jo’s heart throbs in her ears as she runs after the girl, moving too impulsively to plan. “Hey! Where’d you get your shirt!” she yelps.

The girls stops, turns. She smiles down at the black fabric, purple letters, silver Chicago stars. “I made it,” she says proudly. “Have you heard them? They’re, like, my favorite band.”

Tragically heterosexual as she may be, Jo seriously considers kissing this girl on the mouth.

Instead she asks, “Can you make more?”

 

So now they have merch to sell at shows; fire marshals start shutting them down; Pete, with the aspect of a smirking devil, starts inviting the crowd onstage during their last song; in that euphoric, sweaty, frantic crush of girl bodiesvoiceshearts, Jo finds the greatest happiness of  her life; and Jo’s mother won’t get off her back about college essays.

“November first, Josephine,” she’s taken to intoning ominously over breakfast. Little sticky notes with the names of universities and due dates start to appear all over the house: on cabinets, on the bathroom mirrors, on the neck of Jo’s guitar, on her school supplies, in the refrigerator. One morning she wakes up late for school with a post-it on her _face_.

Pete comes over, ostensibly to help, but mostly she’s just rolling around like a cat on a pile of frustrating application packets and grinning at the salacious messages she’s sending someone on her Sidekick. Joan moans over a notebook, complaining, “How do I write three to four hundred words on my future career in business when I don’t _want_ a future career in business? That sounds like the longest, most agonizing path to inevitable death a woman can take.”

Pete, the wise and writerly type in this situation, smirks at her phone. Jo does not feel very helped.

Jo’s mom sticks her head into the den. “How’s it going, girls?” she chirps.

Pete, betrayer of all confidences, say, “Jo doesn’t want to major in business.”

Mrs. Trohman’s gaze flicks between the two of them like she suspects a set-up. “Is this about the band again?” she asks.

Jo’s cheeks burn. She’d spent the drive home from Loyola trying fruitlessly to convince her mother she didn’t need to go to college to have a fulfilling life, not if there were homemade Fall Out Boy shirts cropping up in the wild.

“And I suppose you’ll be a rock star instead?” her mother the cardiologist asked.

Jo stuck out her chin. “What, you think I can’t?”

And her mom laughed, and messed up Jo’s hair, and said in the most embarrassing voice, “Always so proud! I know better than to answer that. I think you’ll work incredibly hard at whatever you choose. That’s what I think.”

“So I can take a gap year in order to pursue fame with Fall Out Boy?” Jo asked.

Her mom laughed again. “Fill out some applications, find a permanent drummer. Then we’ll talk.”

Now, in Jo’s living room, Pete holds a course catalog over her head and flips through pages. Lazy on her back, she says, “Jo wants to major in… medical anthropology.”

Pete’s clearly chosen at random. Mrs. Trohman picks up a course catalog of her own. “Why not Central American pottery?” she suggests.

“Women’s Studies,” says Pete.

“ _Men’s_ Studies.”

“Pre-law.”

“Elementary education.”

Jo is incredibly not amused. They’re acting like it’s a game, but it’s her _life_. This band doesn’t feel like something she can walk away from. It doesn’t feel like some dumb thing pulled randomly out of a catalog. She’ll live out of a van and eat Taco Bell forever, just—she doesn’t want to stop before they’ve even really started.

So she blurts out, “What if we record an album?”

Pete and her mother both just look at her. “Like a real band. Tours, t-shirts, a record. Can I take a gap year if I prove we can do that?”

Pete’s eyes are fucking disco balls. They light the room. “Please, Dr. Mrs. Trohman,” Pete pleads prettily, clasping her hands in front of her chest. “Not only is Josephine an incredibly talented guitarist, she’s a natural leader when it comes to band management—”

Mrs. Trohman gets up from the drifts of application packets. “You are a corrupting influence,” she informs Pete. To Jo she says, “I’m not saying yes.”

“But you’re not saying no?” Jo asks hopefully.

Mrs. Trohman’s lips quirk tellingly. “I still expect you to write the damn essays,” she says.

Jo and Pete clutch each other, erupting into a chorus of shrieks and squealy ‘thank yous’. As Jo’s mom leaves the room, she calls back, “I’m not saying yes!”

*

_our brains may lie to us but our hearts never do_

The words blink at Pete from the screen of her laptop. She’s sending Pat another rat’s nest of inchoate songs, thoughts that could be poems that could be lyrics. Three whole pages are just a list of regrets. Another page is devoted to her favorite words: _ache, flicker, bruise, shine, transmute, violet, gold._ There’s enough noise in there for her to bury all kinds of truths and confessions.

Pat is someone she can confess to. She knows that now.

Pete types,

_ive been thinking about elliot and ian and kurt. the headlines keep comparing them all, like_

_one tortured genius is interchangeable with any other_

_but no one writes about virginia or sylvia or charlotte in the papers._

_women die invisible, like we live_

_but you. you i see_

_youre a bottled star. you shine in the sky_

Pete was terrified of what she’d lose, how things would change between them, when she told Pat the truth. She thought it would be an end to sitting with their feet tucked up on the couch in Jo’s garage, heads pressed together over a notebook. She never thought Pat would reach over and correct her fingering, sliding her hand up or down the neck of her bass, again. No more sleeping in the van in underwear and camisoles. No more virginity jokes. Pete thought the truth would introduce _distance_ , like Pat wouldn’t know how to be around her anymore. Wouldn’t want to, now that Pete had shown herself as no better than any one of a thousand guys who stole into friendship and then declared, expectant, the invasion of their abrupt amor.

Day by day, Pete is discovering she was wrong. Pat isn’t treating her any differently at _all_.

It’s what she wanted. Isn’t it?

She writes,

_once a box blonde asked me about tattoos: which was first, which was worst, which was hers._

_i opened my collar and showed her thorns._

_she took off her bra and i showed my ankle—that victorian scandal—_

_where x marks the spot._

_i did it myself, i told her. with a safety pin & india ink _

_in the middle of class. i was 14_

_and her skirt is up around her navel and coming towards me are her knees,_

_and what im thinking about is how well-prepared i was. had the ink and everything. knew exactly what i intended_

_and how unprepared ive felt for everything since._

_girls are easy. so is ink._

Pete’s honesty is itching and compulsive. Now that she’s started spilling out her heart to Pat, she doesn’t know the way to stop. Pete writes,

_falling in love with a girl isn’t like being lit on fire, hot and obvious and all-at-once, the presence or absence total, absolute, quantifiable. falling in love with a girl is like bathwater. it’s something warm you slip into bit by bit, relaxing as your skin goes pink, the heat flushing your blood til the temperatures match and there’s no difference between the water and yourself, and in you sink, not feeling the too-hot sting._

_all your blood could flow out your veins in water like that. you wouldnt notice it. youd just get hollow. when you rise from the tub again, you leave your body behind._

_falling in love with a girl empties you._

_sometimes it feels nicer to get burned._

Pete writes,

 _sometimes i hope youre not reading this_.

_other times i hope you are._

 

They fight like they always do, writing songs. Jo’s garage is starting to get chilly as the seasons turn. They all remember how sucky it was, trying to play in gloves with the fingers cut off last winter. Autumn, though: for all that it is made of death, to Pete it always feels like a beginning. Life withdraws into the earth, slumbers and warms. The golden seed of everything that grows pulls deep into itself. What looks like death is just rest, gestation. The potential of what will burst feverishly forth, come the galvanizing touch of spring, is limitless. Pete likes that: the way it looks like everything is over, but really, it’s dying just enough to survive. It’s dying just enough to be reborn as—anything.

It makes her feel like maybe she can do that too. Like maybe every stupid thing she’s ever done to tear herself apart has been a type of survival. Like maybe she can’t be blamed too harshly, if the way she learned to protect herself is flawed. Maybe she can pull back in, break down the constituent parts, and reassemble. Maybe she can be iterative. Maybe she can generate a different Pete. Or—the same Pete, made of the same parts, like the way a caterpillar goes into a cocoon and breaks down into cellular _goo_ , and then rebuilds completely, molecule by molecule, out of its raw materials, until it is a butterfly. The way it devours itself completely and becomes something new, but still has its larval memories: a continuous consciousness, only completely different. Pete, too, wants to be a phenomenon science can’t explain. She wants to hold that much hope inside herself.

She wants to offer that much hope out, to everyone else.

So here they are, cold and irritable in Jo’s garage, and Pat is balancing her beat-up laptop protectively on her knees—after the Diet Coke Spill of 2001, Pete is not allowed anywhere near it—writing new songs together for the first time since B.G.: Before Garrett. Or, B.T.S.W.D.W.G: Before The Shit Went Down With Garrett. Pete rubs her chapped fingers together—her calluses go to dry skin hell every time the season changes—while Jo demonstrates a bit of a muddy riff that she thinks could be stronger. Pat, true to form, complains. It is such a perfect moment.

“‘Blurry, blurry/you put my head in such a flurry, flurry?’” Pat reads off. “ _Sixty pages_ of this shit, and 90% of it unusable. Do you think you’re fucking Bukowski or something?” She makes it sound like Pete’s songwriting was put on this earth specifically to plague her. Pete finds it absolutely charming.

“You do it then, if you’re so smart,” Pete suggests. “You know so much about lyrics, you write some for a change. Instead of just complaining about mine.”

“Same from me to you, Jo, about melodies,” Pat grumbles. But in a huff of irritation, she propels herself off the couch and snags the beat-up acoustic guitar that lives in Jo’s garage for exactly this purpose. With her trademark aggravation, she drops into the middle of a melody only she can hear, strumming fast and hard. It starts so suddenly, this nascent song, it takes Pete a minute to feel the shape of it. Then Pat is advancing on her, scowling, singing, “ _I’m writing you a chorus, and here is your verse._ ”

Pete is so delighted she laughs aloud. Pat stops playing, even though her voice rose at the end of the line, about to trip into a verse. Jo kicks the switch on her pedal and her guitar buzzes to life, humming through the amp. She replays what Pat’s just written, grinning as she says, “Keep going, that’s not bad.”

Pat and Jo stumble out of the chorus and into a melody, Jo dropping off into power chords so she can follow Pat’s lead. Pat fingers out something distinctively hummable. Pete grabs the laptop, even though this is verboten, and scrolls to the lines the music makes her think of. She smiles up at her friends and invents a verse on the spot, only stumbling a little as she sings, “ _It’s not the last time, ‘cause I never say no to you. This conversation is dead—on—arrival!_ ”

Pat and Jo bring the chorus back around, and Pete keeps going. She’s grinning shameless now, because this is ripping out of her, out of them, like wildfire, and this is the good part—this is the best part—this is the part that changes her, transmutes her to gold bit by bit, saves her. This is the part where her soul mixes up with Pat’s and the pieces don’t necessarily get sorted back right, when they come back to their respective bodies. This is the part that knits them together closer than close. This is the magic. “ _This is side one, flip me over. I know I’m not your favorite record._ ”

Still sparking, aggressive, Pat takes over: _“I’m writing you a chorus, here is your verse._ ”

The girls play a lead-out, Pete bouncing along on the worn-out couch. Her grin is infectious, spreading from face to face.

“I knew you were holding out on us,” Pete tells Pat happily. “I’m always right.”

Not caring who she brains with her swinging guitar, Jo throws an arm around each of their necks, hugs them so all three of their heads knock gently together. Their foreheads press like secrets and Jo says, “We’re back. We’re really back!”

Pat beams, meeting their eyes and then looking back at her own shoes. Jo kisses her wetly on the cheek, then goes for Pete, who dodges. Jo shoves her lovingly, laughing. Every inch of her gleaming, Jo says, “Now let’s write a fucking album.”

*

_https://www.falloutboyrock.com/forum/Q &A _

**overcast girls, hardcore kings**

 

—Friday, October 4, 2002—

**Lets Play 20 Questions, or: An Evening In With Fall Out Boy**

18:56:02

[ ] peterpanda, jotroho, patty mayonnaise

 

peterpanda: by popular demand, Creep Co. & clandestine industries r partnering for a production in patricia stump’s basement bedroom

patty mayonnaise: Okay wow

jotroho: it’s literally the first thing out of her mouth. like. i don’t even think she has any contrl over wat comes out

peterpanda: AS I WAS SAYING

peterpanda: our sponsors are proud to present: the BODACIOUS BABES OF LEG WAX BEAR TRAP!

patty mayonnaise: Just to be clear. That is not the name of our band.

jotroho: discerning fans will know us as Fall Out Boy

peterpanda: we rnt boys but we r falling out, so

peterpanda: _whoever_ we are this week, we r here to answer questions u have been submitting to our blog.

jotroho: we will be answering in real tme: no rehearsal, no safeties on, no training wheels

peterpanda: thats right kids. i dont know what happened before or what happens after, but for the next 30 minutes, we’re yours

patty mayonnaise: I’m Pat Stump, vocalist and rhythm guitar of fall out boy

jotroho: and i’m Jo Trohman, baller guitarist and van owner and reason this band exists

peterpanda: and im peter pan, lyricist & ne’er-do-well & every reason weve ever almost broke up

patty mayonnaise: she also plays bass

peterpanda: and i also play bass

peterpanda: but really i dont think of myself that way. im a singer. i just sing thru pat’s mouth

patty mayonnaise: you uh

patty mayonnaise: you really know how to make a girl feel special

jotroho: *so* the first Q we’re Aing tonight comes from Candace67, who wants to know: when is your next tour?

patty mayonnaise: well candace, I’m in high school

peterpanda: so what r u doing for winter break

patty mayonnaise: That’s right folks, you heard it here first: for all the good boys and girls who live in California, Santa is bringing you a stocking full of FOB

jotroho: are we doing abbreviations now

jotroho: bc let me just say

jotroho: i hate it

jotroho: u do not have my permission to call us that

jotroho: any of u

peterpanda: no, patty, i mean what are *u* doing for xmas

patty mayonnaise: lying awake on your childhood bedroom floor and listening for reindeer hooves

jotroho: and Jo lightss some candles alone

jotroho: show dates @ myspace.com/falloutboy.com/tour & r tour page on falloutboyrock.com, the webstie u are currently visitng

peterpanda: NEXT QUESTION

peterpanda: ripley_roxx asks: where can i buy your songs?

jotroho: no one tell her there online for free

patty mayonnaise: send an envelope of cupholder change to 900 Forest, Wilmette IL, and we’ll send you an envelope of our songs

peterpanda: actually i have a ? for u, ladies: do u think world-renowned drummer andy “the mermaid” hurley will be part of our secret project

patty mayonnaise: keeping our 1st LP secret seems like a bad move, publicity-wise

jotroho: PATRICIA

jotroho: YOUVE SPOILED THE SECRET

patty mayonnaise: I heard Andy Hurley drums for Slayer now

peterpanda: i heard she’s touring with ozzy prince of darkness

jotroho: i heard nothing

jotroho: wait is she talking to you guys?

jotroho: i don’t think shes talkign to me

patty mayonnaise: with or without the Hurl-O-Whirl, keep your eyes peeled for new music from Fall Out Boy in 2003

peterpanda: keep ur ears peeled also

jotroho: itll be the kind you can put in your very own compact disc player

jotroho: okay, next question: 69WednesdayAddams69 asks: is pete single? what a hottie

patty mayonnaise: pete

patty mayonnaise: pete you totally wrote that

jotroho: who else would have the AUDACITy to register that screenname

peterpanda: ur in luck, ms. addams, i *am* single.

peterpanda: but not fr long! act fast

peterpanda: u sound like a hottie too ;)

patty mayonnaise: NEXT

jotroho: uh that’s actually all the Qs

patty mayonnaise: I thought there were like 8 more?

jotroho: upon reflection, i think all these questions about your hats and xmas list are probably all from pete

patty mayonnaise: what about xmolotovcoktailsx’s one about my songwriting influences?

patty mayonnaise: I had this whole thing I was gonna say about the venn diagram of Peter Gabriel and Michael Jackson and Green Day and Lifetime

peterpanda: oh hon

jotroho: we all know only pete would be interested in ur answer to that question

peterpanda: look at this totally legit ???: zooanimalsinlove wants to know how pat got to be so cute

peterpanda: the people need to know

patty mayonnaise: I just want you to know I hate both of you

jotroho: soooo we’ll see you next month, California!

patty mayonnaise: and we’re coming soon to car stereos near you with our super-secret EP, out in 2003!

peterpanda: srsly youre not gonna answer?

jotroho: and see you on Halloween night @ 10Pin lanes, chitown!

patty mayonnaise: xoxox

*

In the meantime, Andy Hurley makes herself smaller and smaller, receding until, within herself, she ceases to exist.

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Pat goes on a personal journey that leads somewhere unexpected, Andy is a queer consultant, the girls celebrate Halloween, and every version of Pete Wentz is a goddamn car crash.
> 
> Don't forget [this amazing playlist!](https://open.spotify.com/user/marvelgirl238/playlist/7Ja7oPJdFfVAjnYiAjgvRj)

 

Lately, Pat is full of questions.

At lunch, instead of going off campus with Jo (they’ve informally adopted this family of crust-loving ducks in a park next to their favorite place to buy pizza slices; it’s kind of their daily routine. Not that she needs to be eating a huge slice of pizza every day. But the ducks rely on them now), she marches across the cafeteria and sits down across from Anna M., a brief and intense best friend from junior high. Their friendship sparked quickly out of nothing and burned hot. They were the only two girls in the seventh grade with short hair. Pat didn’t know anyone in her gym class, and they bonded shyly over a shared ineptitude at badminton. Soon they were spending every day together after school, Pat going along with Anna to youth group, eating too-crunchy health cereal together on Saturday mornings after sleepovers, buying two churros at lunch automatically to share.

Then, just as suddenly, they stopped.

Four years later, Pat sits at Anna’s table and says, “Hey.”

Anna regards her with curious indifference. They haven’t spoken in a very long time. There was no fire, no argument. It just _ended_. Anna says, “What’s up?” and Pat is surprised by how familiar her low, warm voice is after all.

“Remember when we were 13 and did, like, everything together?” Pat asks.

Anna takes a bite of her sandwich and nods.

“Do you know why we stopped being friends? It’s kind of a blank spot in my memory. But we didn’t fight, and I know I liked you, so—I guess I’m just trying to figure some things out.”

Anna’s cheeks color. She chews for as long as she reasonably can, and then a little longer. At last, she says, “You just sort of stopped wanting to come over. After a while I stopped asking. There were, um. There were rumors about us.”

Yes. Pat remembers the rumors. She remembers people saying Anna was a lesbian, because of her spiky gelled hair. Well—rugmuncher is the word they used. Dyke. Words like names you’d give a creature that lived in the shadows under a bed, feasting on carpets and the ankles of careless children. Scary staccatos that, at 13, Pat didn’t fully understand the dictionary definition of, let alone what it _meant_ to her, let alone how to name the particular wobbly clench of her stomach when she heard, in the halls, kids speculating about their association. Pat’s hair feathered down to her chin at its longest places, an overgrown boys’ cut with lots of shag and bang. The closer her haircut grew to Anna’s, apparently, the stronger the homoerotic poles of the earth throbbed. It was gay magnetism, powering the scorn of the Glenview Middle School rumor mill.

Hearing Anna say it was _her_ , Pat who pulled away, Pat who skittered sideways out of the light—her memories shift and tumble into place, like she’s picking the lock of herself. Pat remembers the queasy dread in her stomach, the larger self-awareness she could not bring herself to look at, the pulse of distaste she began to feel about what being associated with Anna might mean. It’s not like Pat really had any other friends to choose from, not like she cared if Anna really was gay, but—

But yet. It was her who did the stopping.

“I’m sorry,” Pat tells Anna, meeting her blue eyes as solemnly as she can. “I was a jerk. You deserved better.”

“Um?” Anna says.

But Pat’s already onto her next question.

She calls Andy and leaves a long, rambling voicemail, late on Tuesday night.

Andy’s answering machine says, “Hey, you’ve reached Andy Hurley. Seems like I don’t want to come to the phone right now. That puts you in an awkward position.”

Pat takes a deep breath, lowers her guard, and lets the truth tumble out however it may. “Okay, first, I miss you. Call me back. I haven’t seen you in like two months. I don’t even remember what your face looks like! There’s this Baltimore band playing Township this weekend, All Time Low or something like that? You have to come. Everyone’s crashing at my house after. My mom’s letting us make s’mores.” Pat pauses, like the automated cell phone woman might give her the necessary prompting. When that doesn’t happen, she goes on, “I want to talk to you about girls. Um, and how you know you like them. I’ve been looking back on some things in my life and I can’t tell what I’ve been, like, programmed to think vs. what I might actually think? And you’re the smartest person I know about things like that, and also conveniently a lesbian, so I. Um. I hope you come to the show this weekend and we get a chance to talk. Uh, bye? Oh and I hope everything’s going good for you! Yeah. Umm. Call me back. Bye.”

Next on her list is Rebecca. In fourth grade, she was Pat’s closest friend. One night they were sleeping on Pat’s bedroom floor and, under cover of darkness, Rebecca asked, “Have you ever kissed anyone?”

“No,” Pat said.

“Let’s practice,” said Rebecca.

Pat didn’t just balk. She balked so hard that when Rebecca pressed her for why not, Pat covered her head with her pillow and pretended to be asleep. She balked so hard that the next morning, she pretended to have a stomachache, and stayed in bed til Rebecca’s mother had safely taken her away. She could not meet Rebecca’s eyes at school the next day. They stayed friends, sort of, til it dissolved naturally at the end of the school year. They hung out at Girl Scouts. But Pat never had a sleepover with Rebecca again.

It never seemed strange to her, is the thing. She never thought about it.

These days, Rebecca is in Pat’s AP History class. Today Pat passes her a note during lecture that reads _There was a time in 4th grade when you wanted to practice kissing, and I think the way I responded was weird. I don’t know if you remember but I’m sorry about how it went down. Do you remember why you asked me in particular? Was there a reason?_

Rebecca looks alarmed when she reads the note. She shoots frightened glances at Pat throughout class, like she thinks Pat might try to kiss her now, like she thinks Pat might raise her hand and tell the whole class about it. When the bell rings, Rebecca stops in front of Pat’s desk. She leans close. Low and furious, she says, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Don’t talk to me again,” and drops the crumpled-up note on Pat’s desk.

It doesn’t even hurt Pat’s feelings. Because she can see what’s happened: she brought to the surface for Rebecca the same thing she’s spent so long trying not to think about herself.

It’s a little terrifying. It’s a _lot_ terrifying. Pat remembers Shelby, a girl at marching band camp, and how they used to daydream about being college roommates and seeing their shampoos next to each other in the shower. She thinks of the posters she’s pinned on her walls forever, the one she had of Seven of Nine that she used to stand in front of, comparing their bodies. She thinks of the age-inappropriate book her grandma once gave her, one filled with teen misadventures like breaking into construction sites, drinking, fooling around with each other regardless of gender. She thinks of which passages she read over and over. She thinks of hiding it under her mattress from her mother like it was vastly more illicit than it was. She thinks of the feeling in her chest when she watches videos online of Sleater-Kinney or Britney Spears or any of the women she has made idols of. She thinks of the feelings in other parts of her body when she watches those videos, and how easy it is to just call it hero-worship. She thinks of standing in front of the Arma Angelus poster on her bedroom door. She thinks of how that made her feel. She thinks of being with Garrett. She notices certain key differences.

Like the feeling of Pete’s mouth against your neck, it’s innocent, til it’s not.

The harder she looks, the more clearly she sees herself. The more the intensities and abruptness of her history begin to make sense.

Slowly. Question by question. Pat approaches an understanding.

 

The way you keep yourself safe from these things is, you degrade the _meaning_ of individual moments. You keep your processing at a low level. You reduce an action nothing to the sum of its parts. Holding a girl’s hand can be a declaration and a soaring in your chest and _mean something about you and what you want from the relationship_ , or it can be one bone-and-skin contraption mechanically linking to another. You can strip the meaning out of anything, if you’re fanatical enough about self-preservation. If you’re scared enough, you can protect yourself from anything.

 

Andy calls her back, eventually. She sounds far away on the phone, like she’s calling from space, not Wisconsin. When Pat asks if she’s okay, Andy changes the subject. When Pat says how excited she is to see Andy on Halloween, Andy says nothing at all. But when Pat says, “So about my voicemail? And how I’m figuring out some stuff?”, Andy laughs, and it is the best sound Pat has ever heard.

“I can’t believe you tried to ask _Jo Trohman_ about being gay before you came to me!” Andy says.

Pat groans. “She told you about that?”

“Of course she did! It was hilarious! Seriously, have you ever met a more terrifyingly heterosexual person? She has a _fireman calendar_ in her room,” Andy laughs.

“I thought she was—sleeping with Pete,” Pat grumbles in self-defense.

Andy only laughs harder. “She’s the one person in the state that’s not!”

“Yeah, her and _your mom_ ,” says Patrick. Based on the noises Andy’s making, it’s not a very effective comeback.

“Seriously, I taught you what a hymen was! I thought I was your official sex educator. My feelings are very—”

“I knew what a hymen was! Oh my god! Why am I only friends with assholes!” Even as she pretends at irritation, it feels terribly nice, being teased by Andy again. Pat really has missed her. “Our band sucks without you,” Pat says, wanting to share the warmth she’s feeling.

On the other end of the line, Andy’s laughter dies. Pat pushes, “You’re thinking about drumming for the LP, right?”

By this point Andy is totally silent. No sound passes between them for long enough that Pat checks her phone to make sure they call is still connected. At last Andy says, “I’ll do the best I can, okay? But I’m not part of your band. You guys can’t keep taking advantage of me.”

The air’s gone so sour, Pat can’t tell whether this is meant to be a joke. It makes her feel gross, either way. “We’re not trying to—I didn’t know that was what we were doing,” she says. Her voice comes out awkward, makes everything feel worse.

“Well,” Andy says. There’s another pause. This time Pat catches herself hoping the call _is_ disconnected. The pair of them are way too awkward to execute a conversation about whatever-the-hell is happening for Andy with any kind of emotional success.

“So. About them titties,” Pat blurts. It is the first segue she can think of, and it is so abrupt and terrible that there’s nothing to do but start laughing again. She’s so relieved when Andy joins her.

“Uh, yeah,” Andy says, when she’s slowed down laughing enough to take semi-regular breaths again. “I can’t really help you there. Being gay is in the bones of me. I had my first crush on my babysitter when I was like 7. It wasn’t something I had to realize, you know? It was just—me.”

“Oh.” Pat can’t help but sound disappointed.

“It’s harder for bi women, I think. For anyone in between two things. For anyone trying to be the third thing nobody talks about.”

Pat considers that. Then she says, “How do you tell the difference between wanting boys’ attention because it’s natural for the oppressed to crave the approval of their oppressor and you’ve been brainwashed by the power dynamics of the heteropatriarchy into believing that your only value is that which a man sees in you, and wanting boys’ attention because you’re romantically interested in them?”

Another laugh explodes out of Andy, even though Pat doesn’t think she’s said anything funny. “Oh my god, Patricia Stump, be my wife,” says Andy. “This is a formal marriage proposal. If there was any doubt before, it’s gone now. You are officially the woman of my dreams.”

“You say that to all the girls who use the word heteropatriarchy,” Pat accuses. She does not tell Andy that the proposal hits a little too close to home.

“Are there more of them? Give them my number. Seriously, give my number to _each of them_ ,” Andy teases. Then, because apparently Pat doesn’t have to say things out loud for Andy to know she’s feeling them, she asks, “So how much of this terrifying personal journey you’re on is because of Pete Wentz?”

Pat grins into the darkness of her own bedroom. “The Girlsploration of Pat Stump,” she says, trying it out. Andy’s not wrong. Pat has never known her to be. “Um, none of it, I think. Or else all of it? I’ve just been… since the thing with Garrett… I’ve been thinking about which parts of that upset me most. And while we’re rebuilding it, I’ve been thinking about what I want from my relationship with Pete? And it turns out I don’t have any answers.”

“That almost sounds like it _is_ an answer,” Andy points out. Then, lightning-quick, before Pat has time to think, Andy asks, “Pat, name three guys you’re attracted to.”

Pat says, “Uhhhh.”

“Three guys you’ve _ever_ been attracted to. Like, in your whole life.”

With great effort, Pat produces: “David Bowie in Labyrinth. Legolas. And… um… Elton John.”

“Diagnostic scan complete,” Andy says. “You’re a lesbian.”

“Wait, hold on! What’s your list?”

“Dr. Frank N. Furter. Julie Andrews in Victor Victoria. And I really admire Tom Selleck’s moustache.”

Pat reflects on that a moment. Then she says, quietly, “Shit.”

*

In August, Pete told Patrick she was in love with her. In October, she zips Pat into a silver bodysuit and helps her paint a lightning bolt on her face. Pete never expected to be allowed this close again. As soon as she saw it in the light, her love looked so predatory—like she’d tricked Pat into friendship under false pretenses. Like she’d lulled her into a false sense of security and then attacked. Like she was some kind of fucking _boy_.

But Pat has been so—so _nice_ , so _normal_ about the whole thing.

It’s almost worse.

Pete takes extra care flat-ironing her bangs, freshly chopped in a jagged slash and dyed poison-apple red. She smudges her eyeliner just so, straightens the priest’s collar she’s wearing. (She’d wanted Pat to be the devil, so they could match—“I’ll be the holy man, you be my temptation”—but now that she sees Pat as Ziggy, Pete knows she was wrong. The costume is perfect. Pat really is stardust.) She shows her teeth to the two girls reflected in Pete’s crappy mirror, tells them, “We are what’s dangerous in the dark. _We_ are the wolves.”

Pat leans into her side when Pete beckons. Smushed together, they take a high-angle Myspace photo: two glittering girls with the whole world laid out for them, all dressed up for Halloween. The mess and obvious age of Pete’s little apartment bathroom, the weeks of toothpaste caked into the bowl of the tiny sink, the discarded bras and cosmetic tubes and dirty t-shirts and towels that litter the floor around them, the cracked tile and tarnished fixtures—all of that fades into the background. In the photo, all that matters is the _shine_ coming off they two. Pete feels cosmic.

“It’s going to be a good show,” Pete tells Pat. “I can _feel_ it.” She smashes a kiss against Pat’s temple, the kind of invasion she will hate herself for later, and pulls away before she has to see the consequences writ on Pat’s face in the mirror.

They’re playing Delilah’s tonight, a little bar not far from Pete’s, crashing on a floor that doesn’t belong to a stranger for once. Pete only moved into this apartment two months ago, is still getting used to the thrills and threats of independence. She’s never had her own place before. It makes her feel magnanimous. She’s excited to play at hostess. But there’s another reason tonight’s going to be a good night: there’s this guy. This Starbucks guy. Jonathan. The first person Pete’s been interested in since Pat, actually. They’ve been flirting with their phones, and tonight he said he’d come to the show. All Hallow’s Eve, and maybe he’ll want to flirt in person.

Jo’s extremely pissy when she arrives at Pete’s, like no one gave her the memo that tonight’s supposed to be magic. She’s dressed as Moon Base Leia, she had to parallel park the van on Pete’s narrow, poorly lit street of potholes, and her Han Solo bailed tonight. This is what she talks about, mostly, as they drive to the venue and schlep their gear inside.

“What is even the _deal_ with Andrea Hurley lately,” she’s saying crabbily, right after nearly crushing Pat’s foot with an amp. “I look like some kind of—Tundra Tomb Raider in this costume alone! And it was sheer dumb luck Bob Bryar could drum for us tonight. Why did she even say _yes_ if she was just going to _bail_? She’s not in this band, she’s always saying so!”

Pete, actually, tried to visit a couple weekends, and Andy straight-up forbade her to come. Pete’s pretty good at peer-pressuring Andy, but she was resolute. She bites her lip, not wanting to pile on to Jo’s anger, but feeling shut out by her friend and nursing a few hurts too. It’s like, lately, she can only have her shit together one thing at a time. Once Pat’s speaking to her, Andy’s on the fritz. Once the band is getting popular, they can’t keep a drummer for more than two minutes. Once she finally gets an apartment, she starts bombing all her classes. What’s next, Starbucks Boy kisses her and Jo goes into anaphylactic shock? Or maybe a label scout will come to one of their shows and Pete will have a complete mental breakdown.

She wants all the good things at once. She’s tired of the fucking trade-off.

“I’m sure she’d be here if she could,” Pat says, but even she doesn’t sound convinced.

“Plus you make a cute Tundra Raider,” Pete puts in.

“A Tomb Trooper,” says Pat.

“Princess Lara Organa.”

“Shut up and help me soundcheck, would you?” But Jo’s smiling, just a little, as she lets her fingers brush the blaster she’s wearing on her hip.

They’ve never played Halloween before, and the crowd has an energy of its own. Costumes, fans, the fucked-up, the amped-up. It’s wild out there. They jog out onto the stage to the Monster Mash and everyone loses their minds. They open with Calm Before the Storm, _let’s get this party started, let’s get this party started_ , and it feels like the whole room knows the words. Everyone sings along. The whole night feels made for this, made for them.

They play Parker Lewis and Pete leans out into the crowd, stepping on uplifted palms, and screams into her mic along with everyone else, their heads so close. The night is a seething thing, and they seethe to match. Bob’s a better drummer than the last few they’ve cycled through and the set is tight. Pete feels so happy. Pat dances with her hips, belts out angrily the lyrics Pete wrote about Garrett, about Pat, about their friends, about the band. They play Parker Lewis, they play Switchblades and Infidelity, they play a stupid, messy cover of Thriller and Pete, Jo, and Pat all lurch across the stage, laughing and playing too hard to get the dance right. No matter what they play, people seem to know the words. No matter what they play, people scream and jump and dance.

Each voice that sings along makes Pete feel more solid, more tangible, more _real_.

There are a lot of voices.

Pete’s the only one who talks to the crowd between songs, usually—she supplies the patter, the charisma, keeps the energy flowing in the right direction. She feels like an airbender, absorbing and redirecting the emotions of the crowd to create a feedback loop. They amp her and she amps them back. She feels powerful tonight, that old-familiar static under her skin that says, _do anything. Do everything._

Tonight, Pete’s saying, “We’re gonna play a new song tonight. No one’s ever heard it before—it’s her first time! Does that make you guys virgins, or the song?”

“Are you gonna tell them about Pat? Because being friends with a genius is so annoying!” Jo yells, adding laughter to the cheers of the crowd.

“Yeah, Jo’s right,” Pete smiles. Her pride makes her feel full. “This song is called Moving Pictures, and Patty Stump wrote the whole fucking thing.”

No one’s expecting Pat to add, throaty and so close to her mic her lips are on it, “For her. I wrote it for this girl right here.”

No one’s expecting her to point at Pete.

The crowd keeps on erupting, excited about the song, about virginity, about the night, about the band. Pete’s fingers trip electric-but-numb on the strings of her bass. She bends her neck over her instrument, bobbing along to the song, and lets Jo take over the twirling and jumping (she has this havoc-wreaking move they call Trohmania, it looks _so cool_ but at least one person usually ends up bruised or bleeding, she won’t stop) so she can really listen. She’s learned this song in practice over the last week, since Pat brought it to them, melody and lyrics complete, just needing to be polished; she likes it well enough. But she needs to listen to it a whole different way, if Pat’s saying it was written for _her_.

It’s like hearing the song from the first time while she’s inside of it. The notes vibrate out of her bass, the amps hijack her heart, her lungs throb and Pat, next to her, sweats and sings and screams, folds over her guitar and headbangs, ginger Ziggy hair streaming. Pete listens to the verses in ways she hasn’t before, listening for her own life. Then the chorus strikes her wide open, splitting her skin so she hangs bare to the bone.

Her mouth wide and wet and red on the mic, Pat shimmies her hips in that unforgettable, silver-spangled way, and asks, “ _Where can I go when I want you around but I can’t stand to be around you? Go home! I’ll walk myself to you. I’ll walk myself away from here._ ”

The words, the music, the crowd, the night: it lights Pete up inside. She  glows like a grinning jack-o-lantern.

That’s when she knows Pat’s forgiven her.

They close the show with the Ghostbusters theme. It brings down the fucking house.

 

They’re half passed out in a ruin of candy wrappers and blankets on Pete’s living room floor. _Ghostbusters_ plays on her small TV, painting the room blue. Jo groans, clutching her down-vested belly with one hand, eating another Reese’s Cup with another. “Someone stop me,” she says vaguely to the room.

Pete steals looks at Pat, whose lightning bolt is smeared and faded from sweat. Her skin sparkles with displaced glitter. She’s in pajamas now, looking half like an otherworldly Bowie and half like the girl Pete’s always—yes, always—loved.

Pete’s lips fizz with the memory of making out with Starbucks Boy after the show tonight. It was incredibly nice to be touched by someone after all this time. To get the taste of Garrett licked off her tongue at last. Pete can’t remember that last time she’s gone three months without fucking somebody, let alone three months without a kiss, without even a date.

It made her feel empty, at first—like she was foam, slowly dissipating down to nothing. Like she was just an outline of a girl, and like without hands tracing that outline, she’d begin to forget it, too. Like she was effervescence, and soon there would be no trace left. Then, after a while, she began to feel solid. Solid and almost like she existed, even in an empty room, even by herself—like she was _real_ , just being there on her own. Solid is something she hasn’t ever felt before.

She kissed Jonathan tonight because she—wanted to. Because she liked him. Because she likes kissing. Because it sounded fun. She didn’t do it to hold herself together, like he could make her come and that would stop her coming apart.

There’s a version of her that can’t believe she didn’t go home with him: cute, willing, sweet in text, good with mouth. This version of her is happier to be here, in a nest on the floor with her friends, eating a regrettable amount of candy and watching the movies they grew up on. That other version probably never would have considered which would make her _happier_.

This is a different way of being Pete than she has tried before.

She’s not very good at it yet. But she’s going to keep trying.

Sigourney Weaver dodges through her neighbor’s party onscreen, looking fabulous in her pantsuit. Pat burrows her cold feet under Pete’s butt and says, “So a weird thing happened at school the other day.”

“ _Oh my god_ ,” says Jo, who is still crabby, no matter how well the show went. “What a fucking understatement! You’re finally telling her?”

“Telling her what?” Pete interjects. She’s quivering with either eagerness or a critical level of sugar consumption. Just in case this is a ‘more is better’ type of stomachache, she grabs another mini Butterfingers.

Pat flops dramatically on the pillow nest, covering her eyes with the back of her hand. “God, Lara Frost, why do you make everything nine times more embarrassing for me? Like, do you ever have a moment where you think, ‘gee, I could really fluster my friend Pat right now, but I’ll let this one opportunity pass’? Have you ever had even _one_ of those moments.”

“Nope,” Jo says amicably. She tears into a box of Nerds without remorse.

“What are we telling her, though.” Pete has started to bounce.

“I, um. I sort of. I. Well. You know how sometimes, there’s a—well, there’s the, the thing where—”

“I’m going to buy you a page in the yearbook for this so I never have to hear you say it again,” Jo interrupts. Pat is a notoriously bad storyteller, and her nerves do not appear to be helping in this case. “Let’s just make it your senior quote, and then you can just hand people your yearbook instead of—”

“Do _you_ want to tell her, then? Is that it? I’m so sorry, Jo, am I _treading on your moment_?”

Pete claps her hands loudly, like she’s disciplining a cat. “Hey! _One_ of you, just tell me!”

Pat sighs enormously, glaring at Jo from her position of lounging repose. “Okay. So. I sort of—came out at school. Like, kind of publicly,” Pat says, sounding irritated. “It circulated so fast I think Jo was, like, handing out fliers.”

“And buttons,” Jo says. “Plus I made that PA announcement.”

Pete’s brain isn’t processing a single word of it.

“And, um, to my family,” Pat goes on.

“You know, in case they saw one of the buttons.”

“They weren’t thrilled. Obviously,” says Pat. “But they weren’t the worst about it either, I guess. And, uh—now I’m coming out to you.”

“Are you trying to tell me you’re Diana Ross, or—?” Pete is. Pete is. Pete is having a hard time.

Pat takes such a deep breath Pete watches her stomach go all round and taut, her lungs expanding to their utmost. She squeezes her eyes shut and says in a too-fast, too-bright voice, “Uh, so, turns out I’m gay.”

It is the stupidest coming out Pete has ever heard. She hasn’t even processed it before she’s giggling.

Pete needs. Pete needs a minute.

Jo picks up her giggle. She underhands a thing of Milk Duds across the room, smacking Pat in the temple with the little cardboard box. “Eloquent, right?” Jo ribs. “Like I said. Totally quotable. It’s going in the yearbook.”

“Gay _how_ ?” Pete blurts. “I’m sorry, I just—like, _gay_ gay?”

Pat is laughing too now, though her face is bright red and she’s applying herself to sinking into the Sarlac pit of blankets and out of this situation. The thing about being Ziggy Stardust is, he doesn’t wear a hat. She must feel exposed, because seeing her forehead sure makes Pete feel like Pat’s been exposed to her.

“Gay like, not heterosexual,” Pat clarifies. When Pete continues to just stare at her, giggling intermittently, Pat goes on, “Gay like, I don’t think I’ve ever been sexually attracted to a dude, actually, upon reflection, in my entire life? I tried really hard to be. I thought that was just… what it was like with guys. Trying not to grimace, waiting for it to be over. And I thought everyone… felt this way… about girls. Like bathwater. Gay like… that.”

Pat trails off rather helplessly, her voice falling away to almost a whisper by the end. Pete has finally stopped giggling from the shock. She doesn’t know _what_ she’s supposed to feel. She remembers her theory from earlier, the one about trade-offs. The show went well, so now Pat’s coming out to her. The universe conspires to keep her ever off-balance.

“That was brave of you,” Pete says into the silence. “Coming out at school, I mean. To everyone. I’ve never—never had that conversation with anyone. I’ve always just done whatever felt good and let people draw whatever conclusions they wanted.”

“It was _amazing_ brave. You should have seen her. There was basically fire and starlight coming off her. She was Scary Spice. She was Kathleen Hanna. She was Eleanor Roosevelt. Fearless. Invincible. Gay as fuck,” Jo brags.

Proton packs light up the room. Pete watches the TV as completely as possible. She doesn’t know how she’s meant to arrange her face for looking at Pat. She has not failed to notice that Pat told her with Jo here, that Pat told everyone on earth before Pete, even her _parents_. She can’t figure out what any of it’s supposed to mean, if there’s some kind of code hidden in there. Pete’s pretty sure it’s not supposed to mean anything. Pete’s pretty sure that’s the point.

“Okay, it is like. My ninth day as a lesbian. You’re setting the bar a little high,” Pat squeaks.

 _Lesbian_ . Nine _days_ before telling Pete. Pete’s skin itches and crawls. She doesn’t even know how to be in the room with a version of Pat, saying that word. Navigating something so important without her. She doesn’t know what to do to stop feeling like—twistshatter _crack_.

But there’s a version of her who does.

There’s a version of her who knows _exactly_ what to do.

Pete grabs some candy in one hand and her Sidekick in the other. “Be right back,” she says to the room. She doesn’t look at either of them. She steps out of the apartment, runs barefoot down cold concrete stairs. Her bare arms are cold in the night. Her breath makes white clouds of the outdoor air. Her hands shake, but that’s not from the temperature. She calls Jonathan. She leans against the brick exterior wall of her apartment building, works her hand down the front of her jeans. When Jonathan answers, she talks him off.

*

Andy doesn’t spend Halloween with her friends.

Andy spends Halloween how she spends every night, lately.

Andy spends Halloween like this:

In her room, in her bed, crying in the dark.

It is possible that Andy is not okay.

 


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Andy is not okay, the gang mounts a rescue mission, and hairstyles and relationships change.
> 
>  
> 
> [Sweet Jams](https://open.spotify.com/user/marvelgirl238/playlist/7Ja7oPJdFfVAjnYiAjgvRj)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it turns out... this is very nearly the end of the story. Hold on tight, enjoy the hell out of the ride, and I'll see you guys next week with the epilogue. I'm homesick for these girls already.

 

After a while, it’s too much work to even pick up the phone.

She hasn’t gone to her classes in a long time. She is definitely not passing any of them. She hasn’t been to the dining hall in 6 days. She’s living off of snack crackers and the bunch of bananas she picked up the last time she showed her greasy face at breakfast. It’s easy to eat very little when you don’t move or otherwise expend energy throughout the day. When you have no appetite. When you’re exhausted either way. She has very little need for fuel.

Andy doesn’t have a roommate this year. Her parents’ idea: they were concerned about the _influence_ her roommates may have been having on her. Once Andy would have been baffled that these people could approve of Pete Wentz yet voice concern about whatever generic co-ed was sleeping in the next bunk. Now she doesn’t have the energy to feel one way or the other about it. It’s convenient, is the main thing. This level of commitment to dirty pajamas and sweaty sheets would probably cause conflict with a roommate.

“It’s important,” Andy’s mother said, “to be selective about who you spend your time with. The choices you make now will shape your whole future.” She said this a few days after Andy got home from the tour, her head freshly buzzed, her sleeves short, her tattoo out. Things were sharper than ever in that house. Andy wore her fear like armor, telling herself she was unaffected by whatever they chose to do. Then Andy went down to the basement and her mom called down the stairs after her, “Now don’t make a scene, Andrea, you can get new ones after graduation if it still seems important.”

Andy’s kit was gone.

The bass drum Jo put her foot through and they had to re-cover, the plastic still splintered out in a starburst around the site of impact; the second replacement snare they had to buy on tour because Andy kept busting through them; her scratched-up cymbals that she’d been using since sixth grade; her toms with the mother-of-pearl shell she’d saved up for over an entire semester earning minimum wage as a cafeteria busser. The pedal that Dee Plakas signed for her when Andy bumped into her at the music shop where she used to take lessons.

Not even a stray stick remained. Not even the stool. The fucking Grinch Who Stole Christmas was less thorough.

Framed by the daylight behind her, Andy’s mom stood at the top of the stairs. Her expression was lost to the contrast in light. “It’s better this way,” she said, her voice syrup-sweet and, worst of all, thick with real concern. “You’ve been getting so distracted. Now you can focus. And you won’t need to do any more silly things to your beautiful hair!”

These people, they truly believe they want what’s best for her.

They don’t even know who she is.

How could they, when even Andy isn’t sure?

Things got worse, not better, when she came back to campus. That was when it really started to sink in, that she wasn’t going to be saved. How many times can you tell yourself _it’ll be better next year, next year, soon, just a little longer_ ? How many times can you have it turn out to be a lie? How many times can you keep going in the face of it all—of the tremendous, existential _deception_ about what your life is and is not going to be, after all?

The guys from Project Rocket are dicks when she explains about her drum kit. “Get a new one,” they say. They have looks on their faces like they can’t understand how she was so careless as to lose her kit. She doesn’t know how to explain that it wasn’t an accident, it was something that was _done_ to her. She is 21 years old. She wouldn’t explain it if she _did_ know how.

“I’ll have the money by next semester,” Andy says. But getting paid usually requires going to work, doesn’t it? And she hasn’t been doing that.

Anyway, what her band says is, “We gotta find someone else.”

Her band says, “Call us when you get a kit, and maybe...”

They say, “Sorry, dude. But you’ve got that chick band you can play with, don’t you?”

They say, “You understand, right? Taking a semester off would be _suicide_.”

Andy does not say, _I understand perfectly._

 

Later, when she tells her friend Matt, her best-friend-platonic-soulmate Matt, he puts his hand on her leg and says, “I’m sorry, An.” His hand moves higher and he says, “You’ll be around more without practice and shows, though, right?” That hand slides higher still. He says, “It’s hard to be sorry about seeing more of you.”

Andy isn’t Pete. Andy smacks his hand away, leaps to her feet. She stares down at Matt, at her trusted friend, at the one good thing to come out of her college education. Her nostrils flare, her whole frame quivering with rage. You don’t fall for straight girls and you don’t befriend _boys_ . They will always, _always_ get feelings and think that gives them the right to act. They will always, always try to take the _one_ thing you have that’s yours. You give them everything else, and they put their hand on your leg. You trust them, and they slide it up. Up, up, up.

Andy says, “Are you _hitting_ on me right now?”

Matt looks up at her, eyelids heavy, freckled face slack with a sweet smile. Andy almost wishes she _was_ Pete. This would make her feel better, right? Would make her feel _something_ ? But this is the one thing she has never, ever wanted from a guy. She loves Matt. It would be easier, maybe, if she could do that with her body and not just her heart. But she cannot fucking _cleave_ to him. She is not a fallow fucking field to be _plowed_. She is not a girl at all. Maybe being with him would make her feel like one. Maybe it would fix her, just like her mother always says.

But maybe Andy isn’t broken. Maybe Andy’s what she’s meant to be.

Matt looks up at her, all stupid and smiling, says, “Why not? You mean the world to me, An. If you want, we can share this too.”

For the first time, it really, really bothers her, that Matt calls her _An_ . Is she a fucking queen of Britain? Does she need to be feminized, in order to exist? Does she need to be broken into tiny bites and fucking _consumed_?

Even her outrage flares flat. She feels heavy, she feels tired. She does not yell at him. She does not tell him she is disappointed. She pokes herself in the chest and says slowly, clearly, because he is very stupid: “Lez-bee-in. I’m a _lesbian._ ”

Matt’s still smiling, pretty and sweet, all right-all wrong, when she leaves.

 

Her mother was right about one thing. Without drumming, Andy does start to see things more clearly. She perceives herself, her future with a clarity she has never before possessed. She’s _focused_ on it.

She stops showering. She stops eating. She stops getting out of bed. She is incredibly _focused_ , on one particular, dreadful thing.

Is this what her mother wanted? Is this what her mother meant?

 

Her friends call. Over and over they call. Andy lets it go to voicemail. Andy isn’t home.

*

“So what does your boyfriend do?” Pat asks. Her voice is bright, sing-songy. She’s trying to compensate for the tension in the van, which Jo appreciates. It hasn’t felt so fraught in here since Pat and Pete were at each other’s throats or Garrett was spilling dairy products all over her upholstery.

Pete is not cooperating. She snaps, “For the _third time_ , Patricia, Jonathan is not my boyfriend.”

“She’s got ninety-nine problems and Jonathan ain’t one,” Jo sings, off-key, with forced merriment.

“I mean, we’re, I don’t know. Just because I’m not fucking a guy doesn’t mean he’s my _boyfriend_ ,” Pete says sullenly.

There’s a pause while that proclamation sinks in; then Jo and Pat both let out frenetic, slightly deranged laughs. God, Jo feels sick to her stomach. She is so fucking scared.

“I wasn’t asking you anyway,” Pat says, once the laughter has soured and died on their tongues. “I was asking JoJo. She’s been spotted around town with a gentleman caller.”

Jo stares straight ahead, focusing on the I-94. She can feel her ears burning red under her hair. “I don’t know what you mean,” she says coolly to the road.

Pete leans forward between the bucket seats, not even pretending to have her seatbelt on anymore. “A _gentleman caller_?” she yelps.

The roads are icy as they race to answer the absence of distress calls. Jo wishes Pete would sit the fuck down and strap herself in. It’s not like the van’s suspension is so great, its tires so new, its brakes so responsive. It’s not like any one of them is in a position to tempt fate right now. These are the reasons—these and _no other reasons_ —that Jo snaps, “Sit down, Wentz!”

“His name is _Mark_ ,” Pat tells Pete, turning to face her. “Sources say they went to the movies together last weekend. Sources say they were _holding hands_.”

Pete smacks the back of Jo’s headrest, cackling with her usual infectious joy, even on a night as strained as this one. Even on the night Andy sent Jo a text reading _count me out_ , in response to exactly nothing, and then didn’t answer any of hundreds of texts or calls from any of them after.

“Who’s the slut now!” Pete crows, delighted. “Who is Hester fucking Prynne _now_! Jo Trohman, you bicycle covered in venereal disease!”

“Holding hands is like, third base for Jo-level prudes,” Pat supplies helpfully.

“Basically penetration,” agrees Pete. “What do we call that? Metacarpal penetration? Digital?”

“That makes it sound like she’s banging a VCR.”

“Maybe that’s what he does for a living! He’s a videocassette player! Jo, tell us the truth, is he a _sexbot_?”

“Does he come with built-in TiVo?”

“Yeah, Jo, does he _come with_ TiVo?”

“I hope you’re enjoying yourselves,” Jo grumbles. She’s blushing, she can feel her face basically glowing in the dark, and she will never admit out loud that she is grateful to Pete for giving them this diversion.

Pete’s making wet smacking noises with her mouth. Meanwhile, Pat hikes into falsetto with ridiculous breathy moans. They fill up space, distract all three of them from the show they bailed on tonight, from the friend they don’t know how to hope to find. Jo lets herself feel pissed at their childishness, just as a break from feeling catastrophically worried. It’s nice.

Still, Jo’s not _so_ grateful she’ll put up with this shit. She changes the subject:

“If I got a mohawk could we call it a Johawk? Like, I should do it, right?”

The van fills up with laughter again. For a minute, their lungs all work in tandem. For a minute, they all can breathe.

Thirty-one miles to go. Thirty-one miles to Andy. Jo puts her foot on the pedal and drives, drives.

 

Okay, tonight of all nights, Jo’s not a fan of suspense, so to get right to it: Andy is fine. Physically intact. In her dorm room, out of peril.

They tear across campus, sneakers skidding on ice,  from where Jo’s double-parked on a curb to the big, institutional building Andy’s supposed to call home. There’s a delicate moment with the RA who runs the front desk; Pete, thank god, is all charm. She produces a battered JT Leroy paperback from her hoodie pocket, like she never leaves home without a transgressive piece of queer literature or something, and waggles it in front of her tits, grinning. “I neeeeed to get this back to my friend’s room before he notices it’s gone,” she tells the desk guy. He blinks at the cleavage-and-thorns peeking out from the hoodie’s low zip. Pete leans a little more forward, saying in a stage whisper, “I didn’t have _his_ _permission_.”

They get waved right through. The dude doesn’t even question why three of them are returning this one book. He doesn’t ask to see student IDs or anything.

“It would be _so easy_ to be a serial killer if you had tits,” Jo complains as they pound up the stairs.

Jo will never understand why this routine works on people. Jo will never be brazen enough to try it. (She gets concert tickets and smoothies-at-work with her hoodie zipped to her chin, thank you much.) Jo will never look at Pete the way the desk guy, or Pat for that matter, are looking at her now. Of course she’s impressed; of course she’s a little jealous. Pete always seems so in control of things, right up until she doesn’t.

They fall on Andy’s door like an invading army. They batter it with their fists. Pat wrenches at the handle like she’ll rip it out of the door. “Andy, please, Andy,” Pete calls through the door. Her voice catches. Jo’s heart struggles against her skin like it’s trying to explode.

Then the door opens.

They collapse into the room. Jo barely keeps her footing. Her eyes lock on Andy: healthy, living, whole Andy, looking at them with dull puzzlement, her face oily, her pajamas hanging loose off her frame. Her room smells like the bad side of Chinese takeout. It smells like she’s been washing her armpits in lo mein. It smells like she hasn’t opened this door and let any air circulate in a long time.

Jo doesn’t care. Jo throws herself at her friend, wraps her arms around her like she can squeeze all her own fear away. Jo is crying, a little. Pat and Pete layer on top of the hug. They all hold Andy at once, aware of how easy it would have been for her to escape, with them so far away. How easily they might have been too late.

“Um. Hello?” Andy greets them, her voice muffled by six arms, three bodies, lots of quickly wiped tears.

“You fucking _dick_ ,” Jo says back. She buries her teary face in Andy’s neck. She cries and laughs at once. “I’m so mad at you.”

Pat, perhaps more emotionally sensitive, adds, “Are you okay?”

Pete pets Andy’s shaggy head, like she’s making sure they’re both still there. “You scared the hell out of us,” she says.

Andy sinks to sit on one of the single beds in her room. Jo, trembly with relief and not ready to let go yet, keeps hold of her. Pete sprawls herself across the bare mattress on the other bed, making her body casual while her eyes follow Andy like a hawk. Pat hovers over them all.

“I’m okay,” Andy says. She says it to her folded hands, to her lap. She is definitely not okay.

Pat, in her pacing, pauses to study the contents of Andy’s garbage can. She kicks lightly, causing the contents to shift. A sickly banana smell is released. “There’s a whole banana tree in here,” Pat remarks. “You been eating anything else?”

Andy’s voice is flat and dull, the way pennies sometimes get. Like copper oxide, she says, “Not really.”

Jo leans over and sniffs her. She wrinkles her face up at the result. The lo mein poltergeist smell is definitely emitting from Andy’s very unwashed body. It is a smell she remembers from the longest, hottest, crabbiest days in the van. She doesn’t love it. “When’s the last time you left your room, babe?”

Andy’s eyes close as she leans back against the wall. Her body slumps, the effort of sitting upright beyond her. “If I wanted you guys to ask me a whole bunch of questions, I wouldn’t be working so hard to avoid you,” she says without inflection.

Pat, Jo, and Pete all exchange looks. “Umm, first of all, fuck that,” Pete says gently. “You don’t get to suspend our friendship like it’s Jo’s boyfriend’s TiVo account. We’re worried about you whether or not you put yourself in places where you can see it. We have the right to ask a few, like, basic safety questions.”

Pat has stopped walked. She’s standing in front of Andy’s desk. She’s staring at the little cluster of orange bottles there. She picks them up, one by one, naming them. “Vicodin, 300mg, expired 11/25/1998. Xanax, 30mg. Lortab, 15mg, expired 3/13/2001. Lortab, 50mg. Lunesta, 5mg, expired 5/07/1995. Where did you get all this stuff?”

Andy’s eyelids don’t even flicker. She lifts one shoulder, barely, and lets it drop again. Pat sweeps the stockpile into the banana-scented garbage can. She picks it up and holds it firmly against her chest, a portable pharmacy. “Anything else in here I should dispose of?” she asks severely.

Andy’s mouth shapes a slight frown. “It makes me feel better to know they’re there,” she says. Her words come out so slow. Jo grows impossibly impatient between each syllable. “That’s all. I’m not really planning to take them.”

“What _are_ you planning?” Pete asks. Her voice is kind but flinty. Of all of them, Jo knows, Pete is the most qualified to ask hard questions about sadness. “Because it doesn’t look like you’re really planning to be alive, either.”

Andy cracks an eyelid at that. Jo has begun absent-mindedly massaging her arm. Pat is still hugging the trash can, frowning.

“Sitting out is stepping towards nonexistence. Not just one step: every day is a step. Not going to class, not seeing your friends, not answering our calls—not showering. Not eating. Those are all steps,” Pete’s explaining in her softest voice. “Gathering up pills. Trying out the tensile strength of your belts. Lingering over the knife block. Seeing how long you can hold your breath in the bathtub, if you can beat your panic and stay underwater til you pass out. It’s all rehearsal, Andy. And we love you, and we are allowed to be nervous about what you’re rehearsing for.”

Pete’s words weigh heavy in the room. Jo’s gonna start crying again at any moment. Then Pete says, “Anyway, I’m fucking starving. Let’s get some food.”

Jo’s no psychologist. She’s not even a crisis line operator. But she’s pretty sure this is a non-therapeutic non sequitur.

At least, she’s pretty sure until Andy’s eyes blink the rest of the way open and she says, “Yeah, okay. Dining hall’s open til 10.”

Pete springs off the bed like it’s any other Wednesday, any other school night. “Hard pass,” she grimaces. “That shit’s why I moved off campus. We need real food. I need _pie_.”

Pete sails out of the room. Andy shuffles after her in sock feet. Jo, baffled, snags a pair of Andy’s sneakers on the way out the door. She and Pat exchange bewildered looks. Up ahead, Pete’s debating the merits of various pies. Andy is expressionless but, apparently, attentive. Pat, still hanging on to that garbage can, shuts Andy’s door behind them.

*

Probably the best part about being a lesbian, Pat decides, is that no one makes you feel bad about ordering two slices of pie.

Seriously. Break your mirror, give your hairdryer a Viking funeral, never wear makeup again unless _you_ want to, feed your control-top pantyhose through a paper shredder. Eat the whole pie if you feel like it. You’re in Girl Country now. Your marshmallow Peep physique just became adorable.

It feels like not just knowing herself, but _owning_ herself. Not trying to barter bits of her life away in exchange for legitimacy, for validation, for the right. For any rights. No one decides what’s acceptable now but her. But the high court of girls.

And if there’s one thing Pat’s learned about girls, it’s that nothing can stop them when they love each other.

So even though she’s in a skirt today, Docs and black knee-highs and a cardigan over a bleach-stained Bauhaus shirt, the whole affair a bit snug and showy and meant for the stage—even though she’s wearing clothes she would feel too embarrassed to eat in, usually, in other words—tonight Pat experiments with doing whatever the fuck she wants.

It feels incredible.

She sets in on her second slice of pie without the performance of apology or remorse. She goes ahead and just—takes up the space.

Andy watches her a little enviously, and it is so, so good to see _any_ kind of expression on her friend’s face. “How hard would it be to make a vegan pie,” she complains. For all that she claims to have no appetite, her veggie burger and fries disappeared reassuringly quickly.

“Come to my house for Thanksgiving,” Jo suggests, her mouth full of strawberry rhubarb. Pat, a blueberry girl, _despises_ strawberry. “I’ll make you one.”

Andy startles a little. “Really?” she asks, like it’s even a question. Jo flashes her a look of annoyance rather than answering the question.

“Better idea,” Pete interrupts. “Everyone comes to my tiny apartment and we burn a Tofurkey in my kitchen!”

For a moment, Andy’s face lights up. “That would be the best celebration of colonial genocide ever.”

“Holidays are for family,” Jo agrees, “and you guys are mine. I’m in.”

The waveform of light collapses across Andy’s cheekbones. Her brow furrows. She looks very pale and very young. “I can’t,” she says. Her voice is heavier than before. “My mom.”

The sentence doesn’t need finishing. Pete sips the coffee their waitress has filled far too many times—she’ll never stop bouncing the whole booth with her jittery leg now—and says, “Maybe I can convince her? I’m good at parents.”

“That is _not_ true,” Jo says at the same time as Pat says, “That’s a _lie_.” It’s a comical moment, but Andy doesn’t laugh. She stares at her empty plate and looks queasy.

Pete leans forward, swipes a huge blob of whipped cream off Pat’s french silk with her finger, licks it off with exaggerated sensuality, and then says with her mouth full, “I got you on summer tour at 15, I got your mom to tentatively agree to a gap year, and I get you to shows on school nights all the frickin’ time. Tonight included.”

“I mean, I like to think I contribute,” Jo mutters.

“And you!” Pete points her now-wet finger at Pat, who has moved her remaining slice of pie protectively out of Pete’s range. She builds a barricade of condiments around her plate. “Five bucks says your mom would let me go down on her.”

Andy spits Pepsi all over the table. Pat is gratified to see a fair amount of it gets on Pete.

“I knew it!” Pete laughs triumphantly. “I knew you were in there somewhere, Hurley!”

Pat unbarricades her pie and slides it over to Pete. “Here, perv. Have the damn pie.”

Pete grins. “Lost your appetite?”

Pat flips her off, scowling hard to stop herself from smiling. Pete begins doing something to the pie that can only be described as _lewd_. God, she loves her friends. Even this asshole. Especially this asshole.

“What if we don’t even invite Pete?” Jo offers. “We’ll lock her in the hall. Then will you come to Friendsgiving?”

Andy shifts uneasily in her seat. “Seriously, I can’t. You don’t know what she’s like.”

“Can we, like, try? At least?” asks Pat. Andy blinks at her, the early signs of anger slowly rising on her face. “I mean—if the way you’re living now is making you not want to be alive, not show up for your life—maybe it’s worth it to try and live different, even if it’s scary?”

Pat thinks this is pretty profound. Andy’s face is going pink, though, her eyes filling with tears. “She sold my drums,” Andy whispers. “She took my clothes. My closet is nothing but v-neck sweaters and fucking _blouses_ now. This is my only t-shirt.” In her lap, Andy twists the limp, unwashed fabric in her fists. “She said if—if I’m just going to use my paycheck on more haircuts, she’ll call my boss and—”

And then Andy is crying too hard to speak.

Jo crams into their half of the booth. She and Pat make a comfort sandwich around Andy. Pete half-climbs onto the table to hold her friend as best she can. Andy cries, and into the quiet, Jo says, “So fuck her. I’ll shave your head and you can give me a mohawk. We’ll have Thanksgiving at Pete’s. You can spend school breaks with one of us, in a house with people who actually care about you. Her reign of terror ends today.”

“I—can’t—” Andy manages.

But Jo’s not having it. She kisses her friend’s flushed temple, squeezes her tighter, says, “Andy, dude, darling. You have nothing left to lose.”

“Except money for tuition,” Andy points out. Not knowing how else to be useful, Pat uses a napkin to blot tears off Andy’s cheeks.

“That big brain and you can’t figure out a FAFSA?” Jo teases. Her voice is full and soft with love. “Take out loans for whatever you need. I’ll pay it all back when I’m famous. Unless you want to, like, do a girl heist? Wentz’s Eleven-style?”

“Or,” Pete says, surprising everyone by not immediately championing the worst idea on offer, “you could take a semester off and focus on Fall Out Boy. With me.”

“You’re taking a semester off?” asks Pat.

“You’re still trying to get me to join your stupid band?” asks Andy.

“Yes,” Pete says.

“You aren’t even any good,” Andy grumbles. Impossibly, her mouth is twitching with—yes—an actual smile. “Really just a terrible band. Like, you’re nice girls, but it’s embarrassing to be up there with you. You’re gonna have to get serious if you want to keep up.”

“Keep up?” Pat echoes, wearing the special scowl she usually saves for boys talking shit about her band.

“With your new drummer,” Andy says with that little smile. Then she reaches up and tugs one of Jo’s unruly curls. “So tell me more about these haircuts?”

“You mean the JOHAWK?” bursts Jo. “It’s going to be huge, like, liberty spikes—maybe I’ll dye it in a fan pattern, from the roots out, like these different shades of pink—”

Jo chatters on, Andy nodding, her smile growing firmer on her face as she does. Meanwhile, Pat is watching Pete. Pat is watching Pete and starting to realize something that feels important.

“The band means that much to you?” Pat asks Pete quietly, catching her eye across the table.

Pete shrugs, looks away to study her fingernails. “You guys, the band, us. All of it. It’s the only thing I’ve ever done that really mattered. So—I want to start treating it, us, like we really matter.”

And just like that, Pat’s figured things out.

*

Pete is sleepy with sugar-crash and averted peril and a bone-deep feeling of safety. She’s stolen some of Andy’s blankets and made a nest on the bare second bed. Pat’s crammed in with her. They’re used to sleeping in cramped quarters, and no one feels like driving back to Chicago tonight.

“My mom’s gonna be so pissed at me for not coming home on a school night,” Pat mumbles against Pete’s shoulder.

Pete grins slow. “I bet I can make it up to her,” she says, “ _if you know what I mean_.”

“Ugh!” Pat elbows her in the ribs and rolls away from her as dramatically as the small bed will allow. “ _Everyone_ knows what you mean! God, where’s Jo when you need her? When she gets back in here she’s going to call you a syphilitic hooker on my behalf.”

They lay like that, Pat on her side scowling at Pete, Pete on her back Cheshire grinning at the ceiling and stealing satisfied glances at Pete. “Patricia is a fox,” Pete says, because one of her favorite pastimes is making Pat’s cheeks turn that exact shade. “We have this—chemistry. The heart wants what the heart wants, Patty the Stump.”

Pat wards her off with the sign of the cross. “Back, succubus,” she shudders. “Stay away from my mother.”

Currently, Jo and Andy and the electric razor are in the floor bathroom at the end of the hall. Andy is, hopefully, bathing, and then they’re giving each other haircuts. Pete’s sure it’s very slumber party in there. Andy has trimmed Pete’s hair before, when she wore it shorter; Pete remembers her hands being tender, steady, sure.

For now, they have the room to themselves.

Pat inelegantly stuffs her cold feet up Pete’s hoodie, pressing toes of ice into Pete’s stomach. Pete shrieks and nearly falls off the bed, trying to get away. “I will have my revenge!” Pat cries. Pete tries to swat her legs away and grappling ensues. They struggle and fight, laughter and cries of recrimination alternating with each breath, and Pat’s skirt falls higher and higher across her thighs, and Pete hates herself, but Pete looks.

 _Think of Jonathan think of Jonathan think of Jonathan_ , Pete tells herself like a mantra. Jonathan is short and ginger and a little soft, and Pete does not see the resemblance Jo insists on _at all_. Jonathan is not her boyfriend. Jonathan is supposed to keep her head straight. To keep her hands occupied while her heart beats itself out.

Well, her heart is beating hard now. Pat catches Pete’s hands and holds them clasped to her chest, breathing hard, laughing, her cheeks pink with exertion, her red-gold hair falling in her eyes. “I surrender,” Pat’s saying. Pete’s having a hard time looking away from her lips. Things are going well between them, Pete reminds herself. Too well to ruin. It doesn’t matter that Pat is so, so pretty. It doesn’t matter that Pete still loves her so much. It’s over. It never began. There was never anything there.

“I’ve gotta call my guy,” Pete hears herself say. It’s the wrong thing, but it’s her best option. She needs to numb herself. She needs to share a bed with this girl, this _underage best friend girl_ , without behaving like a fucking wolf. She needs to get off.

Pat doesn’t let go of her hands. God, but Pete can feel her heartbeat, thundering there beneath the skin. Pat tips her head a little, her eyes blue and green and gold at once. “Can we talk first? While we’ve got the room?” she asks.

Pete’s whole body is on high alert. Something that’s either hope or panic or pure throw-up is struggling in her agitated chest. “About what?” she asks, and even she can hear that her voice sounds weird.

Pat does drop her hands then. She looks at her own lap, smiles oddly. “Um. ‘The heart wants what the heart wants.’ Right?”

“I’m not going to fuck your mom, Pat. That was a joke.”

Pat laughs, startled, and smacks Pete’s arm. “Oh my god! Not that I would put it past you, _you of all people_ , but no. I don’t mean you and my mom.” Pat takes a deep breath, steals a look up at Pete through her bangs. “I wanted to talk about—um—you and me.” Pat is smiling like velvet, warm and low. Pete has no idea what she’s about to say. Pete feels like if Pat even exhales too hard, she will unravel.

She shakes, bones in skin. The meat of her steeped in unbearable anticipation. She wants to flee. She wants to fight. She fears she’ll freeze.

Pat is starting to react to her obvious terror, uncertainty clouding her face. Pete doesn’t know the words for, _What I do means nothing, so read my mind instead. How I act is a broken indicator of what I want. My heart is a cipher, my brain is stuck on self-destruct. Every night you are my dream._

“You okay?” Pat asks, instead of whatever else she might have said.

Pete hates herself. She shakes her head like _no_ , shapes her mouth like, “Yeah. Yeah. Just—can I make this call real quick? I’ll be right back.”

Quick as a cobra, Pat’s hand darts to the soft inside skin of Pete’s elbow. It holds her in place more surely than a chokehold. “Wait. One minute, okay? Then if you want to go you can go.”

The ice sets in. Permafrost creep. Pete can only shake her head. Pete can no longer speak.

Pat isn’t smiling anymore. She kind of frowns as she says, “A couple months ago you said you were in love with me.”

“In July I was,” Pete blurts out.

Pat looks more wrong-footed with every word Pete says. “Okay,” she says. “In November, are you still?”

This would be the perfect time to be abducted by aliens. “I’m—working on it,” Pete says. She wishes she knew what Pat wanted to hear. No matter what it was, she’d say it.

Pat’s light touch turns into her hand wrapping around Pete’s inner arm. Pete’s entire heart floats to that region of her body. She’s sure Pat can feel it squirming, weak and unguarded in her hand. “Stop a second,” Pat says. Then, without warning, without any notion of what her voice does to Pete, she starts singing: “ _I’m terrified and would you mind if I sat next to you and watched you smile? So many kids and I only see you. And I don’t think you notice me._ ” She smiles a little, says, “Your boyfriend seems to treat you pretty well, actually. But I don’t want you to be with him.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Pete says from far away. It’s the most inane possible thing that could come out of her mouth, but it must be right, because the spark of Pat’s smile catches and spreads.

“You keep saying that.” Pat is leaning closer to her now. Pat’s smirk is very, very close. Pete doesn’t know what’s happening. Pete never expected—Pete doesn’t deserve—

“I could be him,” Pat says, lips and teeth and proximity. “If you wanted. If you still—loved me.”

“That ultra-kind of love,” Pete whispers. Pat has destroyed her blood, brain, and heart. All she’s got left is nonsense.

Pat’s nails are tracing some kind of design on the inside of Pete’s arm, right where the life of her wends through her skin. It is the best thing she’s ever felt.

“It took me a while to figure it out,” says Pat, “but I lo—oh hey, minute’s up. Did you want to go, or—?”

She’s grinning, making a _joke_ , at a moment with Pete’s whole life in her palm _teasing_ , and Pete is so suddenly, sharply _mad_ that she grabs the back of Pat’s head and kisses her on the mouth.

No warning. No consent. Like everything else in Pete’s mouth, allatonce, too much, not enough.

She tries to jerk away like Pat’s lips burn her, to recoil, to apologize, to try to undo her stupid impulsive action like she always does—

But she can’t pull away. Pat holds her in place. Pat leans into her. Hungry, Pat kisses back.

*

Andy’s always liked doing people’s hair. She doesn’t like to talk about it—she’s always balked at anything overtly feminine—but it makes her feel calm, connected to her friends. It’s peaceful. She likes the intimacy, the act of creating order. This is especially satisfying with Jo’s raucous curls, which fall to the tile and pile up around their feet.

Jo watches the proceedings anxiously in the mirror over one of the sinks. They’re cropping most of her hair close to the skull and leaving a thick middle stripe at its full, glorious length. Andy has never styled a mohawk before. She’s pretty sure they’re going to need industrial strength gel and a can of hairspray the size of a fire extinguisher to get all this hair to stand up. For now, though, she just rubs Jo’s scalp for luck and cleans up the lines.

When Jo is shorn, they switch. Andy kneels and Jo shaves her head efficiently, laughing and nearly clipping off chunks of ear as she goes. With each pass of the razor, Andy feels lighter. More sure.

More like she can do this.

Andy closes her eyes, just enjoys the feeling of Jo’s hands passing over her head, the feeling of her hair and so much else falling away. She thinks maybe there is a third option—something not life or death, not boy or girl. Something between being at college working on a degree she doesn’t want and being at home, subjected to the control of her mother. Maybe the world is less black-and-white than she thought. Maybe there are third options for so many things.

The razor buzz stops. Jo’s hand falls to her shoulder. Andy opens her eyes. “Finished,” Jo pronounces. “You’re perfect. Ready to go back?”

Andy meets Jo’s eyes in the mirror. She says, “I’m ready.”

 


	15. Epilogue.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everyone lives happily ever after, exactly as they deserve.
> 
> [This playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/marvelgirl238/playlist/7Ja7oPJdFfVAjnYiAjgvRj) is likely to continue to grow. It's my favorite thing to listen to (other than actual Fall Out Boy).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is for me.
> 
> It’s for you, too. For you and your girlhood, whether you were socialized into it from day one or claimed it later on or have only witnessed the construction and deconstruction of girlhood in the girl souls around you.
> 
> This story is for all of us who are looking for a third option.
> 
> This story is every feeling I’ve ever felt. It has been my entire emotional life for the last four months. I could not have written the same story even a year ago. It is the most important thing I have ever done.
> 
> This is why I’m a writer. This is why I’m a woman, why I was a girl.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and reaching out when the story impacted you, too. Our lives are a series of impacts—fractures and craters and bruises and scars. I hope this has been a positive impact for you. I hope it has helped you clean some of your wounds. Sometimes we feel like sticking our hands in our hurts, keeping them open, is how we heal them. That is a mistake. Fall back in love with being alive. Celebrate yourself and lift up the women around you. Talk to me about Girl Out Boy all day long, and other things you’ve read or listened to that have impacted you in similar ways. Talk to each other.
> 
> Thank you for taking this journey with me. For giving me a home and making this version of me and my story possible.
> 
> I love each of these girls, and I love each of you.
> 
>  
> 
> _I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will, change the world for real_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Girl Out Boy will return.

 

“What’s your New Year’s resolution?” Jo asks. “ _Shit_ ,” she adds in a hiss, burning herself on the waffle iron for what has got to be the sixth time.

Pat is bleary-eyed, her hair sticking up at odd angles. They’re the only ones awake. Pete and Andy’s apartment (they’d unpacked Andy’s last box just before the guests started arriving for the party; it’s official now) looks like a crime scene. Matt Mixon, who Andy ended up forgiving, is tangled up on the couch with Jo’s boyfriend Mark; some combination Chris and Charli are hanging off an overstuffed armchair; people of all genders litter the living room floor. Jo already discovered there’s someone she doesn’t know passed out in the bathtub, Bob Bryar draped over the toilet. All Pete and Andy bought for the party was a root beer keg, but booze found its way in nonetheless.

Pat, at least, doesn’t look hungover. Pat has this _glow_.

“I think I’m living it,” she murmurs. “If you told me a year ago I’d spend the first moments of 2003 in Pete Wentz’s bed, I would not have believed it.”

Jo bumps into Pat affectionately. “Her bed, huh? Quite the year you’ve had.”

Pat swats at Jo. “Smells like you’re burning those,” she grouses. “Not like _that_ , you guttersnipe. Was I supposed to sleep on the floor just ‘cause you’re a prude of international renown?”

Jo sniffs prissily. “ _My_ boyfriend slept on the couch while I spooned chastely with Andy. Maybe my resolution centers on not being a teen pregnancy statistic!”

Pat reaches out and _sproing_ s one of Jo’s liberty spikes, which have wilted a bit since she cemented them in place yesterday afternoon. “If Pete gets me pregnant I will be very impressed,” she deadpans.

“So have you…?” Jo forks a four-up of waffles— _slightly_ overbrowned, okay, but not _burnt_ —out of the waffle iron.

Pat spoons in more batter, her cheeks bright pink. Jo throws chocolate chips on top and closes the wafflemaker. “Um, not technically,” Pat says. “But it’s definitely more a _not yet_ than a _no_. We’re—in negotiations.”

Jo barks a laugh, much louder than the volume considered polite when you’re surrounded by the proto-corpses of mornings after. “Are you so inept at romance,” she says, licking batter off her finger, raw eggs be damned, “that you can’t get _Pete_ to put out?”

“It’s a more nuanced situation—”

“Like, have you considered that you’re just really _bad_ at it?”

“She’s like a born-again moralist—”

“I bet you kiss like Jar-Jar Binks!”

Pat hooks Jo’s chin with one finger and smooches the laugh right off her lips, planting a hard close-mouthed kiss on her. Just the right amount of pressure, the right amount of give—Jo gets goosebumps on her arms. Pat breaks the kiss with a ferocious scowl. Jo has never received a platonic _fuck you_ kiss before, but this is without contest the best one ever staged.

“Wow,” says Jo. “I’m a het and that made me a little breathless.”

“That’s right,” Pat says roughly. “It’s Pete’s issue, not mine. She has this idea that, because she’s slept with everyone else, _not_ fucking me is a grand romantic gesture.”

Jo quirks an eyebrow and licks more waffle batter off her hand. Pat has a tiny smudge of batter on her chin, but Jo decides not to tell her. It’s cute. “Kind of it is,” she suggests.

“Don’t burn these ones too,” says Pat sourly. “What’s your resolution, anyway?”

“To dye the johawk pink,” she says without hesitation. “Duh.”

“Not to sound like a 13 year old in Hot Topic for the first time? But that would be _so cool_ ,” says Pat.

When the waffles are done, they bring them to the single bedroom shared by Andy and Pete. There’s been talk of a larger apartment when the lease runs out. There’s been talk of Jo and Pat going in on it, too. Pat’s always been, well, abysmal as a student; she only cares about bands. College is not especially on her horizon. And Jo’s mom is coming around. They recorded _Fall Out Boy’s Evening Out With Your Girlfriend_ last month, and Dr. Mrs. Trohman said, “If you sell more than five of these, you can defer your acceptance to DePaul for a year. Just _one_ year, Josephine.” Jo can read between the lines: her mom likes the record. Fall Out Boy is gonna be the biggest band in the _world_. They’ll play every continent. They’ll go double platinum. They’ll collaborate with Elton John. They’re gonna have it all.

For now, though, they have waffles. Andy wakes up slow and grumpy, like they alway do. Pete is bright-eyed and full of quiet, intense life from the moment Pat touches her shoulder. They all cram onto Pete’s bed and fill it with syrup and crumbs, tucking into a burnt stack of breakfast food. Pete spots the waffle batter on Pat’s chin and licks it off, which leads to the kind of horseplay forbidden at public pools and syrup in Pete’s hair and ear. They look so _happy_ , Jo thinks. All four of them. They are so happy.

  


_the end…_

_...for now_

 

__


End file.
